Sweden trip for local nurse

Ruapehu Bulletin, Volume 9, Issue 401, 27 August 1991, Page 3

Sweden trip for local nurse

Waimarino's public health nurse Helen Pocknall has won a prestigious nursing study fellowship in child health care. Helen and her husband Mark Hewett leave for Sweden next week where Helen will spend three months studying Swedish health & education systems, specifically to do with unintentional injuries in children under five years old. The fellowship is the first ever to be awarded by the New Zealand Nursing Education & Research Foundation and

is from the Mary May Blackwell Trust. Helen was nominated by her employer, the Manawatu Wanganui Area Health Board, for the fellowship and chosen from nurses New Zealand-wide. Helen said as this is the inaugural placement for the fellowship it has involved a lot of work in arranging contacts in the country chosen as well as travel and other plans. She will be working closely with the Swedish National Child Environment Council which is currently working through a programme to reduce unintentional child injury deaths in

Sweden from an average of 450 to 50. They have already reduced this figure to 100, said Helen, through education programmes to promote safe residential and child care centre environments "In New Zealand there are lots of good things being done in this field too, but we're not getting the message through," said Helen. She will be looking at the way Swedish public health nurses cope with safety checks in the home, among other aspeets of their work. Much of the parent education work of this type

is carried out at a local authority level in Sweden, said Helen, and home safety education is often carried out in the home. This is something that is not readily accepted in New Zealand yet, she said. "Our society tends to see that sort of thing as criticism rather than help." While away she is to visit the Nordic School of Public Health in GotSnburg, and will meet the chief of injury prevention programmes of

the World Health Organisation in Geneva. The work doesn't stop for Helen when she gets back as she has three months to prepare a full report on her studies in Sweden and will be expected to work at disseminating the knowledge she has gained among nursing staff around the country. The Waimarino will not be without a public health nurse while Helen is away as Helen Fahey is to take on the job as reliever.