Delegates urged to embrace education sector colleagues.

"We must embrace our comrades in the tertiary section and bring them home to NZNO. Believe me, they need you," NZNO's professional services manager Joy Bickley Asher told conference delegates.

She was outlining a campaign to boost student and nurse educator numbers in NZNO. While the Association of Staff in Tertiary Education (ASTE) gave nurse educators full industrial support, those who did challenge the "chilling orthodoxy" faced real personal and career risks.

NZNO members were better educated than those in undergraduate nursing education about the strength of collective action. "Collective action leads to better quality education and that leads to better quality health care."

Outlining the number of nurse educator members in the country's nursing schools, she appealed to delegates "to go to these people with your support. Welcome them home to NZNO. We have a lot to teach them about professionalism, collective action and nursing practice." There was a leadership vacuum in the nursing education sector and NZNO had a responsibility to take on that job.

Boosting student membership and the number of nursing schools represented on the National Student Unit (NSU) was an important feature of the undergraduate education campaign. Newly-elected NSU chair Jennifer Reid said, if each conference delegate recruited one student, that would lead to a very powerful NSU. Outlining the Positive Action for Unity and Aroha (PAUA) project, NZNO's policy analyst Maori, Sharon Clair, presented the new PAUA publication Te Rourou Ka Ora Al: The Sustaining Basket to conference delegates. It brings together some key Maori values health professionals need to understand and affirm when working with Maori patients/clients in order to improve Maori health.

Clair said many Maori nurse members and nursing students were feeling despondent and demoralised. NZNO needed to consider ways of developing closer relationships with Maori providers and how best Maori colleagues could have a more meaningful and more equal relationship within NZNO.

After the workshops, a representative from each NZNO region was asked to tell conference their region's best idea for either supporting campaigns at a local level, or supporting Maori colleagues, or boosting membership in the education sector.

Ideas included: an aged-care regional roadshow (Midlands); internet enrolment for nursing students and prizes for such enrolment (Greater Auckland); supporting a member going on strike in an isolated area (Tai Tokerau); offering students a reduced three-year membership (Southern); district health board members "adopting a rest-home" and using Maori structures to support Maori colleagues (Hawke's Bay); an "aging nurse/aging carer" media photo opportunity (Top of the South); a social event-come-workshop to launch PAUA's new booklet The Sustaining Basket locally, and a form of preceptorship for new regional council members (Canterbury); and inviting students and educators to the region's centenary celebrations in November (Greater Wellington).