NEW ZEALAND HEALTH INFORMATION SERVICE

Home > publications

The Primary Health Care and Community Nursing Survey 2001 was undertaken to ascertain the current situation for primary health care and community nurses and to identify obstacles to their contributing fully to new policies and strategies in New Zealand.

The survey was sent to 7763 registered nurses, based on their responses to the ‘work type’ and ‘employment type’ questions in the annual workforce survey. Completion of the survey was voluntary. By April 2002 3562 nurses had completed the primary healthcare and community nursing survey, representing a response rate of 46 percent. While the response rate was not high, it was high enough to gather baseline data and draw some conclusions about the current primary healthcare and community nursing workforce, and some of the issues and barriers that prevent them from practising to their full potential.

A number of issues and barriers were identified in the survey results and are discussed more fully in this report. These issues include:

• Maori and Pacific nurses – the primary healthcare and community nursing professions recruit and retain low numbers of Māori and Pacific peoples
• ageing primary health care nursing workforce – the primary healthcare and community nursing workforce is older than the general workforce, with relatively few recruits from the younger age groups
• geographic distribution – the Wairarapa, Counties Manukau and Waitemata District Health Board (DHB) areas have significantly fewer primary healthcare and,mcommunity nurses than the national average, yet Counties Manukau and Waitemata have larger populations with high health needs
• role fragmentation – primary health care and community nurses cover a broad range of roles in 13 distinct work types. Many work in more than one role and deliver services in more than one setting
• educational opportunities – while theoretically available to most nurses, some cannot access education because of lack of time, finance and relief staff
• clinical career pathways – these are unavailable to over half the nurses who responded to the survey. The clinical career pathway is essential to improving the education, status and retention of nurses in clinical practice, and underpins developments such as the role of nurse practitioner
• management structures and/or leadership roles – these are unavailable to nurses who responded to the survey in many organisations, though on a practical level nurses have input into service planning and/or resource allocation which formal structures may not recognise
• communication and collaboration – though most respondents are able to consult with other health professionals in their own and other organisations, both nurses and employers could do more to improve in these areas.

This report is available as a PDF file (258 kB).

Published 2003
46 pages, A4
ISBN: 0-478-25653-1 (print)
0-478-25656-6 (online)