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New unit director appointed.
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| Subject: | Nurse administrators (Appointments, resignations and dismissals) |
| Pub Date: | 02/01/2009 |
| Publication: | Name: Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand Publisher: New Zealand Nurses' Organisation Audience: Trade Format: Magazine/Journal Subject: Health; Health care industry Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2009 New Zealand Nurses' Organisation ISSN: 1173-2032 |
| Issue: | Date: Feb, 2009 Source Volume: 15 Source Issue: 1 |
| Persons: | Named Person: Lawless, Jane |
| Geographic: | Geographic Scope: New Zealand Geographic Code: 8NEWZ New Zealand |
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| Accession Number: | 194904179 |
| Full Text: |
Long-time NZNO activist, emergency nurse, and a member of the
Committee of Inquiry (COT) into Safe Staffing and Healthy Workplaces
(SSHW), Waikato Hospital nurse co-ordinator Jane Lawless (right), has
been appointed the new director of the SSHW Unit. She replaces inaugural
director Vicky Brewer, who resigned late last year after guiding the
unit over the last 18 months. NZNO's chief executive Geoff Annals said her appointment, officially announced earlier this month, was "fantastic news. Through her involvement in the Col, which called for the establishment of the unit, she knows the work inside out and is also very familiar with the clinical workplace. She will have a great deal of credibility as the unit director," he said. Lawless was also the NZNO representative on the former government's Health Workforce Advisory Committee. Lawless, who will be on secondment from the Waikato District Health Board, is very pleased and excited about her appointment, but well aware of the challenges ahead. "The Col report is a very good piece of work but there are difficulties in engaging the sector, which often sees reports as just another set of empty recommendations. That's the challenge. But I have lots of ideas about how to meet it." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] She meets the unit's governance group this month to "find out where we need to be in 18 months" and to discuss further her ideas of how to implement the CoI recommendations. Lawless wonders whether a whole sector approach will work. She is Looking forward to discussing with the governance group the idea of "model sites", in which the Col recommendations can be implemented well. She believes such an approach offers some possibilities. She believes one of the key mechanisms for successful implementation of the recommendations could be the joint action committees (JAC), now established in every DHB, following the last NZNO/ District Health Board (DHB) multi-collective employment negotiations. "These committees could be a pivot on which everything turns. I don't think they been have used to their full potential yet and they could be catalysts in the work of the unit," Lawless said. "NZNO and DHB representatives could sit down together and realty make a difference at the workplace level." A hands-on approach that progresses work from analysis to action will be a feature of her directorship. She empathises with those who feet a sense of disappointment in the pace of change to date but stresses everybody wants to see the unit and the CoI recommendations work. "The unit has a very good network established. I'd like to see us move quickly now to a stage where we are supporting sites to put the recommendations in place and see what happens. If we don't, we're never going to know what could have been achieved. We don't need to invent anything new and the unit is still our best shot at the moment. It's about engaging hearts and minds now." Lawless will be working out of Hamilton which, she points out, is dose to many Large DHB and private sector sites. She begins work officially on March 2. |
| Gale Copyright: | Copyright 2009 Gale, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved. |