Putting poverty on the agenda on International Nurses' Day.

NURSES HAVE tended to treat poverty as something that happened to individuals, rather than a social is sue that needed a collective response.

So said NZNO policy analyst Eileen Brown, who organised an International Nurses' Day (IND) function in Wellington on May 12. This year's theme for the day was "Nurses Working with Communities Against Poverty."

Speakers at the function included Green MP Sue Bradford, who talked about her private members' Bill for the reinstatement of the universal child benefit, which was defeated at the first reading. She exhorted people to support the Bill, to reopen debate on the best way to reduce child poverty.

Clothing, Laundry and Allied Health Workers' Union secretary Maxine Gay spoke on the link between globalisation and poverty--about the effect of free-trade policies on union workers here, and on garment workers in Asia.

Primary health care nurse and Te Runanga o Aotearoa NZNO member Maiteria Tuatahi spoke about her own experience living on a benefit and bringing up children, and her hopes and goals now that she was a nurse leader working with deprived communities. And Janine Vollebregt spoke about her work as a nurse with families in the Wairarapa.

Brown said about 40 nurses attended the function and gained a better understanding that poverty was a real experience for many people in this country, "especially as it is a subject we don't talk about freely". Even though poverty and ill health went hand-in-hand, nurses had tended to individualise poverty, rather than see it as an issue needing a collective response.

She said NZNO's board supported Bradford's Bill and that poverty was now on the agenda of unions. "Also, many of our members are on low incomes. There is such a thing as 'relative poverty', when there is no room for luxuries of any sort."

Looking after babies of mothers on methadone was just one of the nursing initiatives showcased in Christchurch on IND.

Jan Dobson and Georgina Ennor run the neonatal abstinence syndrome community programme from the neonatal outreach services at Christchurch Women's Hospital. Ennor said babies of mothers in the methadone programme were given morphine after they were born, to counteract the symptoms of the mother's methadone. "Once the babies are stabilised on morphine in the nursery, they go back into the community with the mother and then come into the clinic once a week as they are gradually weaned off the morphine. We also visit them in their homes twice a week."

Other nursing initiatives featured in the Christchurch showcase included a co-operative scheme run by the Nurse Maude Association and Christchurch Hospital's infectious disease ward. It helps patients get back home and live normal lives by allowing them to self ad minister antibiotics at home through an intravenous line or have a district nurse visit and do it for them.

And Leonie Bell was presented with a trophy for nursing excellence (see picture above), after being nominated by the nursing team at her Christchurch Hospital general medicine ward for her "outstanding qualities and excellent patient care".

In Nelson, the School of Health and Social Sciences at the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) held a series of flee public lectures, marking 30 years of nursing education at the institute, as well as IND.

NMIT tutor Sue O'Reilly spoke on what could be learned from the families of dementia sufferers, while tutor Jane Heather gave a lecture on working with families with a young member suffering mental illness. A panel comprising NMIT tutor Helen Childs, Nursing Council education adviser Angela Bradley, Christchurch Polytechnic Institute of Technology nursing school head Cathy Andrew and Kai Tiaki Nursing New Zealand co-editor Teresa O'Connor discussed whether nursing should return to hospital based training.