Conference Proceedings - School of Nursing & Midwifery - Trinity ...

School of Nursing & Midwifery, Trinity College Dublin: 8 th Annual Interdisciplinary Research Conference
Transforming Healthcare Through Research, Education & Technology: 7 th – 9 th November 2007
Conference Proceedings
to introduce nursing as primary health care and to design a
programme in conjunction with our clinical context, we could see an
ownership that was really important to the students” (Participant 3:
21-26).
However, some of the stakeholders also felt that the students did
not necessarily have to work in hospitals, especially if they
envisioned a career in community care for themselves. “We have
got new grads out there in the primary health care. So we are
finding out what some of those issues are and we are getting
systems around that. This probably took about 15-20 years to
develop here. You cannot be fast tracking that for primary health
care. And the thing is that there is still an attitude that you have got
to do med, surg., basic, before you go out into primary health care.
It is just absolute necessary to get rid of that myth. Because my
vision is that nurse who wants to practice at a hospice or in a
community, don’t even have to work in a hospital, as long as they
understand that continuum.” (Participant 4: 214-227).
Some academics might argue that a student who never worked in
hospital will not be able to deliver quality care to the population. To
this effect, Lawson (2004:229) said that collaboration will,
eventually, penetrate “these core technologies because the
stakeholders know they cannot achieve success or enjoy
effectiveness without it.” This might have been the ground for the
next statement: “Certainly what I did like about the process was the
level of collaboration. Like being a Clinical Facilitator or whatever,
like I did not deal with the students but I dealt with the Grads quite
a lot and looking at preparedness for practice and that sort of stuff
for me, it was not specific to MIT but certainly what we had been
seeing was reduced confidence and sometime competence around
clinical practices and new practitioner” (Participant 7: 37-46).
The stakeholders did not identify all the new approaches to nurse
education as being positive. “A lot of it is government driven –
funding and they tell you what to do and . . . elective surgery, it is
all about the dollar” (Participant 2: 142-145). Here one could see
the fact that the Nursing staff were not necessarily pleased with the
way in which health care delivery had developed. However, one has
to remember that the move away from health care delivery in acute
care settings to community care settings is not unique to New
Zealand (Gaines et al., 2005:505).
The curriculum change had to be based on the needs of the health
care providers and the students. Knapp and Lowe (2001:14)
identified the need to “listen” to the “customer”. In this case, one
could define this “customer” to be the “Stakeholder”. Staats
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