NZ medical bureaucracy ‘blocking nursing leadership’

New Zealand’s highly qualified nurses are being side-lined by healthcare changes that give more power to “a generic management structure” than to experienced professionals, a leading nursing academic has said.

Jenny Carryer, professor of nursing at Massey University and executive director of the College of Nurses Aotearoa, says the country’s nurses are “working in a pressure-cooker environment”.

In an editorial published on the Health Central website, she says “endless restructuring” of hospital departments is favouring bureaucracy at the expense of nursing leadership.