Whilst working in the Nursing/Midwifery Department at Massey late last century, I got a call from Bonnie in New Plymouth . Bonnie, an Independent Occupational Health Nurse, was looking for a nurse to do health assessments for a client company with sites in the Manawatu.

For four years previously my nursing work had been two years in Staff Development, and two years at Massey; and for six years before this I worked in Cardio-Thoracic surgery at Greenlane, Auckland , and Guys Hospital , London .

“Health Assessments, that's different…”

So I completed the contract for Bonnie, and talked to local businesses about doing health assessments for their workers. High-risk industries seemed keen to participate in a health risk assessment process, so within six months Health Watch Industrial Health Services was under way…

 

Health Watch New Zealand Limited, “Healthwatch”, registered as a New Zealand company in 2001. At the time Healthwatch was home-based and I did all the nursing work and the business work.

Now, in July 2005, Healthwatch has doubled in size each year, to a client base approaching 3,000 people. Our clients are employees of six national companies, and a variety of smaller regional businesses, scattered through the length and breadth of New Zealand .

Fourteen registered nurses from Whangarei to Invercargill have made themselves available to work as independent contractors to carry out the nursing assessments that are the basis of Healthwatch's work. Healthwatch nurses regularly travel to Kaitaia and Keri Keri, as well as the West Coast of the South Island , Invercargill and Bluff. We go to all the major centres in between, as well as to New Plymouth, Hawera, Wanganui, Gisborne, Wairoa, Napier, Te Kuiti, Hastings, Oamaru, Timaru, Queenstown and Wanaka.

The focus of the nursing assessment is bringing staff health issues into focus. The aim is to encourage people to take positive steps of their own accord to improve their own health and fitness; and particularly to show the Company the areas that they need to understand in order to look after their people better.

Personalised health reports are returned to each individual; reports detailing the health and safety issues on each site are presented to site managers; comprehensive statistical reporting showing health, fitness and safety trends are offered to corporate managers.

Training for contracted nurses aims to ensure they are confident and competent, both to use the state-of-the art monitoring equipment supplied by Healthwatch, and to present feedback to each client as information that will help improve their personal health, fitness and safety behaviour profile.

All nurses are surveyed following completion of each job to see how well prepared they were for the particular and unique aspects of each work place.

Managers are also surveyed to provide feedback about the nurse's performance and for any ideas to improve the usefulness of our service to them and their Company. Nurses also receive this information about the way their work is perceived. Ideas to improve all aspects of nurse and company performance are developed from this process.

Peer review is used to help nurses discuss their abilities, needs and problems; and their exemplars (the “Where/how I believe I made a difference…” stories) will help to upgrade the quality of information that Healthwatch can provide to clients and client companies.

Professional portfolio requirements are being reviewed at present. Some of the contracted Healthwatch nurses work only for Healthwatch. Our way of working places us outside the area that traditional approaches to Occupational Health encompass, yet while we certainly fall beneath the umbrella of the Primary Health Nurse, we occupy something of a unique category within the New Zealand nursing scene.

We engage in market research activities, to see what it is our potential and actual clients want. Our marketing activity is targeted to high-risk industries, and our promise to companies is that we can find out all the things they wished they knew about the health and safety risks within their workforce groups, and that we will help them to do better on the Health and Safety front. Inevitably, this is a dollar-saver and companies who use our services have expressed confidence that we do indeed highlight and help to resolve problem areas for them and their staff.

As Healthwatch expands we are always on the lookout for highly-motivated confident nurses who will bring new skill sets to our workforce. We also are conscious that there are many ways to approach problem situations. Hence our workforce and our ways of working are constantly evolving to produce better outcomes for all concerned; for the nurses who do our work, for the companies and their employees with whom we interact, and for Healthwatch.

Brigid H McRae RGON, MA (Nursing), FCNA(NZ)

Director, Health Watch New Zealand Ltd

www.healthwatchnz.com

802 Main St , Palmerston North

021 703 769