Education
Educating and preparing competent nurses
The Nursing Council is responsible to the public of New Zealand under the
Health Practitioner Competence Assurance Act 2003 for the registration
of enrolled nurses, registered nurses and nurse practitioners. This is
an important role and includes setting standards for nursing education
and nursing education providers. The Council prescribes the
qualifications and the education standards for nursing programmes in
each scope of nursing practice, to ensure that graduates of these
programmes are well prepared and competent to meet the health care needs
of New Zealanders. The Council’s primary concern is public safety.
In
addition to setting the standards for nursing education providers that
offer nursing programmes, the Council accredits and monitors these
programmes. It ensures that nurse education providers are kept informed
about legislative requirements regarding competence and current Council
policies to protect public safety. The Council oversees educational and
clinical issues and works closely with both nursing education providers
and government quality assurance agencies such as the Committee on
University Academic Programmes and the New Zealand Qualifications
Authority (NZQA).
The Council has a Memorandum of Understanding with NZQA that
enables the Council to use for its purposes information obtained through
NZQA approval, accreditation, monitoring, and external evaluation and
review processes. To help monitor the ongoing quality of nursing
education programmes in New Zealand, the Council also shares with NZQA
the information it gains through its accreditation and/or monitoring
visits.
Nursing programmes approved by the Council include
Enrolled Nurse, Registered Nurse, Nurse Practitioner, Competence
Assessment Programmes (for New Zealand nurses returning to practice and
internationally qualified nurses) and Nurse Entry to Practice (under
contract with Health Workforce New Zealand).
Other Council initiatives in education include:
- working with individual nurses who wish to change the conditions on their scope of practice
- ensuring that undergraduate programmes meet criteria such as the
clinical hours requirement and programme length for the nurses
undertaking these programmes
- providing information and guidance on a range of issues related to nursing education.