May 2011
Presidents Report
Succession planning is a vital part of any organisation, it is healthy,and so to ensure continued vision and direction of the Auckland School Nurses Group todayI step aside and let a new face of this organisation lead. I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on the successes of the last few years and thank those that have supported me as we have grown as an organisation.
I came into this role as President like all of you here today because we have a belief in the young people of this country and we have a desire to ensure they are physically and mentally well, as they make their way through their schooling years.
As the President over the last 7 or 8 years my vision has been to raise the profile of what you all do.To see your work integrated into the primary healthcare of every young person in this country. I was fortunate to join the ASNG at a time when school nursing was piloted as part of a multidisciplinary approach to identifying and managing the unmet needs of young people in secondary schools in South Auckland. We know this as AIMHI Healthy Community Schools and what this project did was give us the platform to raise the awareness of what many registered and enrolled nurses had been doing in schools for years. Your contribution was under the radar and what this organisation has done is drag that contribution under the noses of politicians, academics and health boards to get them to deliver what we know works.
When the ASNG started it was a few like-minded nurses who choose to meet to share their experiences and support each other as they practiced in a world isolated from health. The AIMHI model had nurses meeting monthly for peer supervision and we were able to bring this successful concept to the ASNG and therefore the clusters evolved as a way to support practice and meet each individual’s practicing certificate requirements. I am delighted that we now have very few nurses working in total isolation which was the norm as recently as 10years ago.
Our practice has been endorsed and supported by 3 research projects over the last 5 years. Firstly University of Auckland looked at the AIMHI healthy community schools project. Mark Jones the past Chief Nurse at the MOH, commissioned Victoria University to critique nursing services in schools and then again MOH commissioned Price Waterhouse Coopers to look at the contribution nurses in schools made to the well being of young people. A personal frustration has been despite this affirming research we are still struggling to see nursing services in schools funded nationally by MOH.
One of our goals has been to see school nursing leadership as part of health. The eventual establishment of Vote Health school nurse contracts has seen the creation of school nursing leadership in CMDHB and ADHB. Though many of you still work in Vote Education these DHB roles are vital to be the voice that I hope one day will see more health funded school nursingpositions. My congratulations to Dianne Dawsonand Diana Nicholson in CMDHB and to Celeste Gillmer in ADHB - these 3 are your voice at DHB level and through their passion, commitment and professional approach I believe we will see funding and planning better understand your contribution to youth health. With funding and planning of Waitemata DHB and ADHB amalgamating, I believe we will see more collaborative services and highly likely one new DHB. I will continue to represent this group in Waitemata on their primary healthcare nurse leader group for the present time.
A recent article by Tapu Misa in the NZ Herald in support of school nursing stated “Think of preventive health care as the condom that most governments don’t want to wear. Prevention let’s face it isn’t sexy”. We are fighting for the same dollar as child oncology, child trauma, and child abuse. This is what makes the headlines and gets the Vote Health dollar. Along with the rest of primary health we need to constantly be highlighting the value and importance of health promotion and early intervention for our young people. The importance and relevance of this organisation in the years ahead is vital, therefore it’s imperative that you all take every opportunity to put youth health on people’s agendas along side these leaders.
We have been through difficult times over the last 3 years both economically as a country as well as working with a Ministry who seems to focus on disease management as its main use of the health dollar. Our challenge for the future is to be the voice for our young people who do not vote and advocate for their wellbeing as much as others advocate for coronary bypasses, hip replacements and diabetes.
I have been blessed during my term as President to have had the support of a great executive committee. Their role has been to arrange and facilitate the 2 professional development days each year as well as be the catalyst to feed information and ideas from the clusters to the exec and then back to the clusters. Thank you all so much for your support, loyalty, inspiration and passion. Welcome and thankyou to the new members of the executive for giving of your time to support the organisation.
Special thanks to Charlotte who has taken the organisation from near financial self destruction to an organisation with a healthy bank balance. Her integrity and accurate accounting skills have been a huge asset to us and the organisation will miss you greatly. We wish you well as you venture back in to general practice and hope to see you back in a school nurse role one day in the future.
Special thanks also to Catriona who has persevered in getting information out to you all via email, a feat often at the mercy of the reliability of the schools IT systems. Sharing with you all the many opportunities to increase your knowledge is a vital part of the ASNG. For those long time members you will remember the newsletter sheet calledHandover that was compiled and distributed. Technology has certainly been a God send over the last 10years.
Another IT milestone for the ASNG was the development of our website. A fledgling website was initially developed in 2004 however was able to be considerably expanded as part of the CMDHB school nurse project over 2005/2006. Diana was able to increase her already numerous IT talents to learn how to create and manage a website. This has become a useful resource for all nurses across NZ. Though some what dated now, the future looks encouraging for our website as the DHB’s appear willing to commit some of the school nurse leaders time to the updating of resources and information on the site. I would like to thank Diana for the generous giving of her own time to keeping this website going.
There are numerous other skills and talents that I would like to thank Diana for as I finish in my Presidents role. She deserves a medal for been able to work so closely with me and I am eternally grateful for her ability to keep me grounded as often my dreams and aspirations get carried away by emotion and passion rather than common sense and sound strategic planning. Every pilot needs a wing man. Diana thankyou for your support loyalty and friendship over these last few years I could not have managed with out you.
Thank you all for putting your trust in me to lead the ASNG. I am proud of the organisations achievements. As a group we are well recognised professionally by our peers and are seen as a group of youth health professionals striving for the best for our young people. To the many of you that have under taken post graduate study congratulations and thank you. Your commitment to increasing your evidence based knowledge and expanding your clinical skills is what has seen us gain the respect we now have as part of the wider field of youth health professionals in NZ.
I can step aside today knowing the organisation is strong financially and grounded in leadership passionate and excited about the challenges and opportunities for the future. It is my intention to stay in school nursing for the time being so I look forward to been a part of this shared vision and future.
Thank you
I move that my resignation and report be accepted.