The Health Ministry’s new chief nursing officer says priorities will be achieving equity in health outcomes for Māori and ensuring a sustainable workforce will be a major aim for her job.
Margareth Broodkoorn is the first Māori to hold the position.
She comes to it after 30 years in the profession, most recently as head of nursing and midwifery at Northland District Health Board.
She says nursing has a key role to play in leading change, and much will depend on the shape of the 52,000 strong workforce.
"We’ve got a lot of work to do around ensuring we have got a future sustainable workforce in terms of our numbers of nurses and we know it's an aging workforce and we will hit what's called the grey tsunami in terms of a lot of nurses retiring from the workforce so we need to be mindful of that, focusing on supporting new graduates and of course looking at and supporting the development and increase in Māori and Pacific nurses," Ms Broodkoorn says.
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