An independent external review of the New Zealand Nursing Council has concluded that the Council is an effective regulator with strong leadership and a commitment to improve.

The Nursing Council sought the review, which was conducted by the British Council for Healthcare Regulatory Excellence (CHRE), in line with its commitment to organisational effectiveness and to enable it to benchmark its performance. The CHRE has an established process for peformance reviews, developed through undertaking annual performance review of nine health professional regulatary bodies in the United Kingdom and for other organisations.

Nursing Council Chief Executive and Registrar Carolyn Reed says the review was both pleasing and useful.

"We aspire to reaching a high standard in regulatory practice. The review of our functions was extremely thorough and provided us with a critical external perspective. It is always helpful to see one's performance through the eyes of others and we particularly value the patient/public focus of the review," Ms Reed said.

"The report commented that reflective practice as a hallmark of professionalism and commended our commitment to reflecting on our performance and to continuous improvement. As we require an ongoing commitment to professional development and competence from nurses, it is appropriate that we as the regulator are accountable and transparent."

The Council asked the CHRE to focus its performance assessment particularly on governance and the management of competence and fitness to practice of nurses.

The CHRE considered the Council's governance to be appropriate and that the Council is protecting the public through its conduct, competence and health processes. It also commented that the Council regularly seeks the views of stakeholders to ensure that policies and processes are as effective and efficient as they can be.

Whilst the CHRE made a number of recommendations it noted that this does not mean that the Council's performance is inadequate. Recommendations are aimed at improvement and best practice generally not at addressing failures. 

Recommendations covered:

• Improving governance by placing greater focus on public protection, more efficient management of meeting papers and agendas, clearer oversight of financial matters by the Council and changes in the selection and appointment of Council Members.

• Giving greater attention to the length of interim suspension orders for nurses dealing with health issues and to reviewing the separate processes for conduct, competence and health matters.

• Improvements to procedures to ensure greater consistency of outcome including better record keeping, an overall quality assurance framework, more detailed and comprehensive recording of decisions.

• Improving public confidence by greater transparency, better communication with the public, improved letters and more information on the register.

Ms Reed says the Nursing Council welcomes the review and has developed an action plan to address many of the suggested improvement. In the interests of transparency both the review and the action plan are available on the Council website.