Sherrard, Isabelle

Jocelyn Peach
Aug 7, 2024
3 min read

Updated: Jan 6

Registered Nurse [RGON]; Bachelor of Education; Master of Philosophy Nursing Education, QSO (for Community Service), JP, MPhil (Massey University), RGON (NZ)

Retired. Self-employed. Formerly Dean of Faculty and Head of Nursing Education at UNITEC Auckland NZ.

Isabelle Sherrard (née Leeburn) was a student at Christchurch Girls High School [1952-1955] before she entered the nursing school at Christchurch Hospital with forty-eight women in her intake. She described this as “hospital training” or apprenticeship model of nursing education. As a newly registered nurse in February 1960, she married ten days after sitting the State examination. Isabelle and her husband, Evan, a Presbyterian minister in training, travelled overseas to Northern Ireland in 1962 where she spent six months in a geriatric hospital on the outskirts of Belfast before moving to Houston, Texas. She gained important experience in Texas. She is reported to have felt at a disadvantage to get work in American hospitals because they required registered nurses to have a nursing degree. She initially worked as a graduate nurse and in Anne Arbour Michigan, after attending a 12-week course on obstetrics and psychiatric nursing, worked at the University of Michigan in the Burns Unit. Her contact with academically trained nurses in Michigan introduced her to the concept of the “nursing process” and she developed appreciation the value of university education and research. She was appointed as head nurse of a urology and haematology unit.

In the 1970s Isabelle and her family with two small children, returned to New Zealand initially working part-time at the Chalet Hospital, Dunedin Hospital and in 1976 settling in Auckland. In Auckland she applied a nurse tutor position at the Greenlane school of nursing in 1976. She describes that she loved teaching and received “wonderful” feedback both formally and informally. She was appointed to a Nurse Lecturer in the nursing school at the Auckland Technical Institute.

In 1970, the Government commissioned Toronto school of nursing head Helen Carpenter to conduct an in-depth consultation into nursing service and education. Concerns included exploitation of student nurses and their high drop-out rates. The Carpenter Report resulted in the gradual transfer of nursing education from hospital schools to tertiary education institutions, between 1973 and 1986. The process began with pilot programmes at Wellington and Christchurch polytechnics. Students were to be taught a broad curriculum, to become registered comprehensive nurses. The last two technical institutions to be granted schools of nursing were Carrington in Auckland and the new Porirua institution, Whitireia.

Isabelle identified that nursing tutors were expected to have advanced education. In 1977 she enrolled as an extramural student at Massey University and gained a Bachelor of Education [BA (Ed)]. Isabelle was hired in late 1985 as “course supervisor” to lead the new school at Carrington. Carrington (which later became Unitec) taught the trades, engineering, business, design and secretarial, so the nursing school was a breaking new ground. They created a nursing curriculum that included the growth of feminism and changing ideas about nursing, reflecting its evolution to an autonomous profession, with its own ethics and body of knowledge, te ao Māori, the Māori world view, into nursing education. Isabelle was appointed Dean Faculty of Health and Technology in October 1985 to December 2002, responsible for nursing, health science, horticulture and engineering, medical imaging, sport science and animal science and osteopath. She achieved Master of Philosophy Nursing Education in 1996, Massey University, titled Nursing a Good Days and Bad Days: A Grounded Theory study of Disabled Women’s Sexuality.

Isabelle served two terms on the Nursing Council in the 1990s

She received the QSO for services to the community in 1998 at Government House.

Isabelle has retired and is self-employed under Sherrards Consulting Ltd. She is the mother of two adult children and grandmother of two grandchildren.