Great expectations: Inheritance, equity and the family farm

This article alerts farmers and those who advise them of the need for caution when making arrangements or agreements with family members regarding the future ownership and succession of the family farm. Such arrangements are frequently oral and informal. Promises are made and revised, and often unspoken ‘understandings’ are arrived at. This lack of legal formality gives rise to a propensity for matters to go badly and bitterly ‘wrong’. Furthermore, the article draws attention to the fact that, even where formal arrangements are made, they are vulnerable to challenge and the nature of the legal and equitable doctrines applicable in such cases means the outcome of such challenges cannot be confidently predicted. It may come as a surprise to many farmers to learn that their autonomy in dealing with their land and businesses can be overridden by legally imposed obligations of morality and good conscience. The article illustrates its thesis by examining three High Court cases in which family farming agreements have been challenged. In each case, the court determined the fate of the family farm, not by reference to the farmer’s intention, but by the application of succession legislation and equitable doctrines, such as equitable estoppel and unconscionable transaction. Moreover, in two of these cases, the farmer’s actual intention was overridden in favour of an arrangement that better coincided with what the court considered that he ought to have done - resulting in an outcome that neither the parties nor their legal advisers could have expected

The shifting sands of nursing informatics education: from content to connectivity

This chapter considers the development of nurse education over the past 50 years and ventures a view towards 2020. A link will be made to the introduction of informatics to nursing curricula. It is clear when looking over the recent history of nurse education that it has moved from a medical model and content driven apprentice mode to that of a reflective agile professional mode where autonomous practice allows for collaboration in care and connectivity between health professionals. Parallel to these pedagogical changes are the introduction of informatics across healthcare, starting with computer skills and moving through information management to decision support. The chapter will conclude with some thoughts around the next possible steps forward for nursing informatics education

Current Online Health Information Searching Practices of New Zealanders: Preliminary Results from a Pilot Study

The availability of free health information online makes the Internet a popular source for health information. The upward trend of online health information seeking has made this a popular research topic. While many researchers have explored various facets of online health information searching, limited information is available on online health information searching within Aotearoa New Zealand. Existing research studies are dated and do not reflect current online health information searching practices. Thus, in this research in progress paper, we describe the online health information searching behaviour of New Zealanders (n=40). Key findings indicate a variety of sources are used. Participants search experience was either generally good or good. However, there is a need to educate online consumers about local health portals and to pay attention to information sources. Participants indicate the manner in which a search is performed could influence their search experience

Social media and population health virtual exchange for senior nursing students: an international collaboration

The authors have all engaged in using social media with students as a means for collaboration across national and international boundaries for various educational purposes. Following the explosion of big data in health the authors are now moving this concept forward within undergraduate and postgraduate nursing curricula for the development of population health virtual exchanges. Nursing has a global presence and yet it appears as though students have little knowledge of the health and social care needs and provision outside their local environment. This development will allow for explorative exchange amongst students in three countries, enhancing their understanding of their own and the selected international population health needs and solutions through asking and responding to questions amongst the learning community involved. The connection of the students will be recorded for their use in reflection; of particular interest will be the use of information included by the students to answer questions about their locality

Social media providing an international virtual elective experience for student nurses

The advances in social media offer many opportunities for developing understanding of different countries and cultures without any implications of travel. Nursing has a global presence and yet it appears as though students have little knowledge of the health and social care needs and provision outside their local environment. Our collaboration across three countries, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States of America, brought the two themes together with the aim of senior student nurses having a communication channel to explore public health issues in each country. Using a closed Facebook™ page, third year undergraduate adult nursing students were invited to take part in a three month pilot study to test the feasibility of virtual collaboration through exchanging public health issues. Here we report upon the collaboration, operation of the social media, and main findings of the study. Three core areas will be reported upon, these being the student’s views of using social media for learning about international perspectives of health, seeing nursing as a global profession and recommendations for future development of this positively reviewed learning technique. To conclude consideration will be given to further development of this work by the collaborative team expanding the countries involved

Nursing and eHealth: are we preparing our future nurses as automatons or informaticians?

The Education Working Group of IMIA NI present this thought provoking panel where the changing and challenging role of nursing will be explored within the information intensive eHealth arena. The session will be of interest to any nurse as the discussion will be driven by the objective of trying to understand how best to prepare nurses to be actively engaged in information and communication technology (ICT) developments that enhance care assessment, delivery, evaluation and audit. As a balance, the discussion will consider the increasing emergence of ‘nursing by numbers’ where risk assessment tools are used in an automatic way leaving little room for individual evidenced based care

Nursing informatics competencies for entry to practice: the perspective of six countries

Internationally, countries are challenged to prepare nurses for a future that has ever increasing use of technology and where information management is a central part of professional nursing practice. There has been a growing trend to move nursing to competency-based education, especially for those students undertaking their first nursing qualification. This first nursing qualification may be linked to pre-registration, pre-licensure or undergraduate education; the term used depending on the country. The authors are drawn from the International Medical Informatics Association special interest group, Nursing Informatics (IMIA-NI) Education Working Group and represent New Zealand, the United States of America, England, Australia, Finland and Canada

Technology developments applied to healthcare/nursing

Future technology developments as applied to healthcare and particularly nursing were discussed. Emerging technologies such as genetics, small unobtrusive monitoring devices, use of information and communication technologies are as tools to not only facilitate but also promote communication among all parties of the healthcare process. These emerging technologies can be used for ubiquitous healthcare (uhealth). The role of nursing in the u-health is fundamental and required for success and growth. Nursing's role will evolve as nurses become 'information- mediators' in a broader-sense than current role. All technologies will ultimately focus on the consumer through 'behind-the-scenes' data collection, which in turn will also allow nurses to analyze these data to improve care. We need to acknowledge an increased presence and or pervasiveness of information technologies as key components of quality healthcare. This sort of acknowledgment will help propel nursing, and healthcare, to increase use of these tools. To develop nurses with these types of skills the nursing education process will require a fundamental change to integrate these technology-sorts of tools as necessary elements for success.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pregnancy outcomes and birth defects from an antiretroviral drug safety study of women in South Africa and Zambia

OBJECTIVE : To evaluate the safety of combination antiretroviral therapy (ART) in conception and pregnancy in different health systems. DESIGN : A pilot ART registry to measure the prevalence of birth defects and adverse pregnancy outcomes in South Africa and Zambia. METHODS : HIV-infected pregnant women on ART prior to conception were enrolled until delivery, and their infants were followed until 1 year old. RESULTS : Between October 2010 and April 2011, 600 women were enrolled. The median CD4þ cell count at study enrollment was lower in South Africa than Zambia (320 vs. 430 cells/ml; P<0.01). The most common antiretroviral drugs at the time of conception included stavudine, lamivudine, and nevirapine. There were 16 abortions (2.7%), 1 ectopic pregnancy (0.2%), 12 (2.0%) stillbirths, and 571 (95.2%) live infants. Deliveries were more often preterm (29.7 vs. 18.4%; P¼0.01) and the infants had lower birth weights (2900 vs. 2995 g; P¼0.11) in Zambia compared to South Africa. Thirty-six infants had birth defects: 13 major and 23 minor. There were more major anomalies detected in South Africa and more minor ones in Zambia. No neonatal deaths were attributed to congenital birth defects. CONCLUSIONS : An Africa-specific, multi-site antiretroviral drug safety registry for pregnant women is feasible. Different prevalence for preterm delivery, delivery mode, and birth defect types between women on preconception ART in South Africa and Zambia highlight the potential impact of health systems on pregnancy outcomes. As countries establish ART drug safety registries, documenting health facility limitations may be as essential as the specific ART details.President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the terms of Cooperative Agreements U62/CCU123541, 3U2GGH000175–01W1, and 3U2GPS001421.http://www.lww.com/product/?0269-9370hb201

An international recommendation framework of core competencies in health informatics for nurses.

Background: While health informatics recommendations on competencies and education serve as highly desirable corridors for designing curricula and courses, they cannot show how the content should be situated in a specific and local context. Therefore, global and local perspectives need to be reconciled in a common framework.Objectives: The primary aim of this study is therefore to empirically define and validate a framework of globally accepted core competency areas in health informatics and to enrich this framework with exemplar information derived from local educational settings.Methods: To this end, (i) a survey was deployed and yielded insights from 43 nursing experts from 21 countries worldwide to measure the relevance of the core competency areas, (ii) a workshop at the International Nursing Informatics Conference (NI2016) held in June 2016 to provide information about the validation and clustering of these areas and (iii) exemplar case studies were compiled to match these findings with the practice. The survey was designed based on a comprehensive compilation of competencies from the international literature in medical and health informatics.Results: The resulting recommendation framework consists of 24 core competency areas in health informatics defined for five major nursing roles. These areas were clustered in the domains “data, information, knowledge”, “information exchange and information sharing”, “ethical and legal issues”, “systems life cycle management”, “management” and “biostatistics and medical technology”, all of which showed high reliability values. The core competency areas were ranked by relevance and validated by a different group of experts. Exemplar case studies from Brazil, Germany, New Zealand, Taiwan/China, United Kingdom (Scotland) and the United States of America expanded on the competencies described in the core competency areas.Conclusions: This international recommendation framework for competencies in health informatics directed at nurses provides a grid of knowledge for teachers and learner alike that is instantiated with knowledge about informatics competencies, professional roles, priorities and practical, local experience. It also provides a methodology for developing frameworks for other professions/disciplines. Finally, this framework lays the foundation of cross-country learning in health informatics education for nurses and other health professionals