Abstract

Since 1999, a not-for-profit Pacific Health Service in an area of Hutt Valley, New Zealand, has delivered a range of health services in response to the needs of the Pacific People. The Pacific Health Service delivers a variety of services including a Pacific Nurse-Led Service that includes a walk-in clinic and mobile nursing service. Working in partnership with the Pacific Health Service, a Senior Pacific Researcher from Victoria University of Wellington was commissioned by Pacific Perspectives through the Pacific Grant Fund from the Ministry of Health, to conduct an evaluation of the Pacific Nurse-Led Service in 2013. The aims of the evaluation were to assess the effectiveness of the Nurse-Led Service, to develop the professional expertise of nurses in monitoring and evaluation and provide capability support.

Data was collected using qualitative interviews with 21 patients. The themes arising from these interviews suggest that the implementation of the Nurse-Led Service results in Pacific peoples receiving the service have ‘increased awareness’ and have made ‘behavioral changes’ around healthy eating, exercise, smoking, weight loss; improvement in their clinical assessments; improvement in attending appointments and their outlook on their general health was positive. It became clear that home visits were working well for Pacific peoples, as well as the daily exercise program, health education sessions, and the flexibility of the ‘walk-in-clinic’. Building capability support in nursing practice evaluation was identified as a priority to sustain the effectiveness of the Nurse-Led Service. This model could be applied to other Pacific and primary healthcare settings in small communities..

Keywords:Evaluation; Pacific health service; Pacific Nurse-Led; Pacific people experiences