University nursing programme mooted

Dr Shirley Smoyak takes a break in the University of Otago grounds from the Te Ao Maramatanga New...
Dr Shirley Smoyak takes a break in the University of Otago grounds from the Te Ao Maramatanga New Zealand College of Mental Health Nurses Conference in Dunedin recently. Photo by Craig Baxter
It is time a nursing programme was offered at the University of Otago, visiting New Jersey psychiatric nurse and academic Dr Shirley Smoyak says.

Dr Smoyak, who is a professor of public health at Rutgers University and has been awarded "living legend" status by the American Academy of Nursing, was in Dunedin to address the New Zealand College of Mental Health Nurses conference.

She said she understood there had been a programme with a nursing curriculum at Otago University for several years after 1928 but it had lapsed.

Nursing belonged at the medical school in the "prestigious" university, she said.

Dr Smoyak suggested the programme would have lapsed because physicians did not want it.

It would take intervention from high-powered politicians to introduce it again.

"You can convince anybody to do anything if you put your mind to it," she told the nurses, suggesting this was a situation where they could follow her solution to an old problem.

"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink. Then give him salt." While she did not wish illness on legislators, all it might take would be a politician with a seriously-ill family member nursed back to health by a nurse who had a "baccalaureate degree" to bring the message home.

Speaking afterwards, Dr Smoyak said she would be happy to return to deliver the opening address at a school of nursing at the university in future.

At the beginning of her address, Dr Smoyak asked audience members to think about the way they used the Maori language, questioning whether many of them were using the words with little understanding of their meaning.

In the United States, if another language such as Spanish was used it was always translated.

She suggested this could be done in New Zealand with Maori.

"Would that be outrageous? I don't think so."

A woman with wide research interests, one of her current projects involves gathering information about university students' understanding and use of high-energy drinks.

She was particularly concerned about the risks of using such drinks with alcohol.

Research which had looked at people with similar blood-alcohol levels showed that those who had taken the caffeine-rich high-energy drinks with their alcohol were wide awake and felt "perfectly fine and safe to drive".

Those who had been drinking alcohol, but not the high-energy drinks, were more aware of their state and would try to find their designated sober driver rather than drive themselves.

There needed to be greater awareness of the risks associated with such drinks which were "roughly equivalent to three very, very high octane coffees".

Dr Smoyak said she was concerned that young children were being exposed to the energy drinks and in the United States some schools sold them in vending machines.

Parents needed to become more knowledgeable about the drinks and not give their children money to buy them: "Cut them off at the pass."

Anyone with a family history of any kind of heart disease would be "really very, very foolish" to use the drinks, she said.

elspeth.mclean@odt.co.nz

 

 

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