Nursing Futures Taskforce Meeting Notes 22 May 2026
- 3 days ago
- 6 min read
Attended:
Jenny Carryer, Sue Adams, Andrew Jull, Kate Weston, Sandy Bayliss, Jocelyn Peach, Helen Snell, Chelsea
Willmott, Sue Gasgoine, Wendy Blair, Rachel Webster
Apologies: Jill Wilkinson, Josephine Davis, Mark Jones, Catherine Cook, Maree Sheard, Sanda McDonald
DNA: Nicolette Sheridan, Helen Hamer
Discussion
A. Cultural Safety and Scope of Practice
Jocelyn prepared thoughts on how to progress the articulation of cultural safety. Suggestions include:
1. Frame cultural safety as practical, evidence-based, and beneficial. Keep cultural safety grounded in Te Tiriti and lived experience. Ground arguments in existing legal and professional obligations Use international and human rights frameworks where relevant. Define cultural safety clearly and calmly
2. Publish using evidence rather than rhetoric. Reframe the issue around professional standards and patient safety. Document better health outcomes, improved trust, increased service engagement and reduced disparities. Tell real stories alongside data. Use evidence strategically
3. Build broad coalitions: professional [NCNZ, MCNZ, Allied Health, Māori leadership
4. Participate consistently in democratic processes, engage respectfully but firmly
5. Think long-term. Support staff to navigate tension constructively
Action:
Jocelyn will continue work on this with a 2-month timeline. It was suggested that evidence about outcomes be accessed. Suggested also to seek input from Professor Matire Harwood (Ngāpuhi).
B. Specialist Nurse Practitioner
Helen, Rachel and Sue have been working on the paper. Jenny asked who the audience is and is happy with the tone. She suggested that emphasis on nursing as an investment rather than a cost, that saves patient comfort, patient adverse events, that shortens waiting times, which reduces hospital admissions. Examples will be left to minimum to protect practitioners.
Action:
Work to be completed and then discussion about how to promote the paper.
C. Labour policy funding GP’s and not specifying NP
Kate, Chelsea, Jenny and Mark have all sought conversations with key people to understand whether the role of nursing can be promoted.
Action:
Work to continue.
D. Funding – New Graduate funding
Continue to receive updates from Liz and their team.
Josephine had expressed interest in the new graduate employment profile of Māori and Pacific nurses. Jos to ask Liz if this data can be collated.
Discussion about whether evaluation will be undertaken about the medium to longer term, the impact of taking new graduates into employment in an ad hoc way rather than a co-horted approach. It is quite a challenge to access the data outside TWO.
Action:
· Request monthly data ongoing.
· Ask if evaluation is planned 1. To gain increased FTE working on a casual basis in unsupported environments - this is not safe. 2. Data needs to separate out ARC and primary care. 3. What has happened to the funding for new graduate PHC programmes.
· Sandy is developing a new graduate survey – is happy for suggestions for questions for this.
· Ask for information for Josephine and Sandra regarding Māori and Pacific new graduate nurses
E. RN Prescribers
Meeting next week at NCNZ to discuss further progress on the issue. Await report from meeting.
Action:
Wait for feedback from NCNZ meeting
F. RFP and Nurse Practitioner programme
More work is needed to progress this work. It is not clear who have oversight of the new approach which appears to focus on the general practice roles and not the wider NP training programme that also includes specialist practice settings. There is little link of academic and the primary care contract holders. While information has been shared about learning from past cohorts that need transitional support. Nikki had suggested that a table be developed that outlines the policy directive source for NPTSS primary-only funding restriction (stated as "very clear direction from Health NZ/Health Workforce") and Components included/excluded in NPTSS contract award. Further advice will be sought about integration.
Action:
· Jos to ask Liz for advice about the contract oversight process -? Claire Bosworth
Concern about slashing of school nurse budget
Jocelyn spoke to her discussion with the leader Jodi Cash of the Auckland School Nurses Group. She explained that their information is that funding for school nurses in the lower North Island and in Hamilton where there is no funding for 600 students. She explained that Health NZ funded Decile 1-5 but that other schools only had a school nurse if the school paid for it. The School Nurses are a self-motivated group and try to understand the national picture as much as they can. They have participated in a pay equity report.
Information about Wairarapa attached:
Wairarapa Map Kiera McAnulty re school nurses in his region.
Jodi explained that they are working on an acuity tool to identify what portion is direct frontline care and what portion is administration, meetings, planning, documentation, and professional obligations — none of which are visible in a student-to-nurse ratio.
New Zealand's current school-based health service (SBHS) funding formula — 1.0 FTE registered nurse per 750 students — was never derived from a workload analysis. It is a ratio inherited from international practice guidelines that have since been rejected as inadequate even in those jurisdictions that created them. In the NZ context, this formula is applied to nurses who work in isolation, with no administrative support, under a mātauranga Māori service delivery framework (Te Ūkaipō), holding multiple standing orders, sending o diagnostic swabs, attending high-risk and multi-agency meetings, maintaining relationships with school staff and counsellors, and fulflling the full suite of NCNZ continuing competence requirements — all within the same 37.5 hours per week that the ratio presupposes is spent purely on clinical care.
They refer to a Youth Health and Wellbeing Survey 2025 (What About Me? / YHWS) The YHWS 2025, commissioned by the Ministry of Social Development and conducted with approximately 9,400 young people aged 13–19, is the definitive national picture of what school nurses are walking into every day (MSD YHWS 2025):
· 21.2% of young people met thresholds for elevated levels of psychological distress
· 13.2% reported high levels of depressive symptoms
· 31.6% reported symptoms indicating high risk of possible disordered eating — warranting further assessment
· Only 65.6% reported good or excellent wellbeing
· These are not referral-and-discharge numbers. They represent the ongoing, complex, relational, multi-appointment burden that presents daily at school health clinics.
Jocelyn will work with Sue Gasquoine to consider how to support this group profile the importance of the School Nurse role as regards youth health and wellbeing.
Action:
· Jocelyn and Sue to liaise further
G. Aged Care
Tracey Martin, Chief Executive Aged Care Association was unable to attend our meeting. To be asked for the next meeting.
Action:
· Further work is needed to develop a paper outlining the safety and complexity issues
· Connect with the nurse leaders on the Aged Care Advisory Group – Kate and Jocelyn
H. Other business
H.i. Reference to International Nurses Day 2026: Empowered Nurses Saves Lives. https://www.icn.ch/sites/default/files/2026-05/ICN_IND2026_report_EN_A4_4.0.pdf
H.ii. Invite chair of NCNZ to meeting in July: Dr Sharon Brownie
H.iii. Summary of HPCA changes from a law firm along with likely timeline https://www.dentons.co.nz/en/insights/articles/2026/may/20/new-zealands-biggest-health-regulation-shake-up-in-20-years
[AI] The Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Amendment Bill (introduced May 18, 2026) is the largest shake-up of New Zealand's health regulation in 20 years. It amends the HPCA Act 2003 to shift 18 independent professional bodies toward a centralized health model aligned with patient needs and Government priorities.
Key Changes Proposed in the Bill:
· Ministerial Direction: Empowers the Minister of Health to directly instruct regulatory authorities (like the Medical or Nursing Councils) to enforce Government health policies.
· Registration Oversight: Establishes an independent committee with the power to review, and potentially overturn, regulators' decisions that refuse or limit a practitioner's right to practice.
· Conduct & Safety: Broadens regulatory focus from just clinical competence to include professional conduct. It explicitly allows for the immediate, interim suspension of practitioners without prior notice if there is a serious risk of harm.
· Efficiency Improvements: Introduces restorative justice and conciliation processes to resolve complaints, and allows the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal to resolve certain matters "on the papers" to speed up proceedings.
H.iv. Make a submission opposing removal of ethnicity-based criteria for diabetes medicine (closes 28 May 2026). Evidence-based healthcare founded on te Tiriti is essential for a healthy future for our communities. Pharmac is proposing to remove ethnicity criteria for diabetes medicine. If it sets out on this harmful path, it will not only hurt people and their whānau experiencing diabetes, it will promote an approach to health where evidence, equity and te Tiriti can be ignored.
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