October 2017 December 2013 | Page 4

Te Puawai

Editorial
substance or veracity. In other situations the
same new terminology is used by all yet
simple investigation reveals that not all share
the same understanding of meaning.

The statement that has become apparent
lately is the one that suggests primary health
care (PHC) nursing leadership really needs to
“step up”. Cathy O’Malley (Deputy Director
General of Health) may have unwittingly
launched this at the Primary Health nurses
conference in Wellington earlier this year. I
am informed that she suggested or at least
was interpreted as saying that when PHC
nurses found obstacles in their way to
delivering better services they should “kick
some tires” “step up” and not just accept it.
Which is perfectly reasonable. What has
since stunned me however, is just how quickly
some Ministry of Health personnel now parrot
the statement about leaders needing to step
up, as new gospel, but if challenged are not
exactly sure why they said it and what it
means.

Professor Jenny Carryer
RN, PhD, FCNA(NZ) MNZM
Executive Director

The health bureaucracy (probably just like all
bureaucracies) in its broadest sense has a
long-standing habit of trends, buzz words,
bandwagons, news ways of describing things
and catch phrases. It never ceases to surprise
me how very quickly they spread and how
earnestly they are taken up and shared or
spread.

Alongside the speed of spread goes a level of
thoughtlessness. Many adopters of the “ mots
du jour” seemingly give little thought to their
© Te Puawai

So let’s think about it in some depth. The first
irony is that nursing itself, since the launch of
the PHC strategy has noted the need for an
infra-structure of leadership in primary care
services from PHOs to General Practice and
through broader areas of primary health
service delivery.
A revisionary read of
Investing in Health (MoH 2003) and the
updated document (NZNO, College of Nurses,
2007), shows that nursing has been very
cognisant and concerned by the paucity of
leadership
structures
and
leadership
development in such settings.
We have
argued for the need for specific leadership
development, and for the same professional

College of Nurses Aotearoa (NZ) Inc
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