Bio: Frances A. Hughes, a 2001-02 Commonwealth Fund Harkness Fellow in Health Care Policy, is chief advisor for nursing in New Zealand's Ministry of Health. She is responsible for leading all government nursing policy initiatives in New Zealand, including nurse prescribing, primary health care nursing, and nurse practitioners. She represents New Zealand on international committees and has been part of the New Zealand delegation to both World Health Organization and Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting. Prior to her current appointment, she served as senior advisor (Nursing) with the Ministry's Personal Health. Hughes has 20 years of experience in the New Zealand health service working as a health clinician manager and educator, and has done extensive research into workforce development. She is currently completing a doctoral thesis at the University of Technology, Sydney, looking at the role of interest groups in policymaking. She is also a fellow of both the College of Nurses Aotearoa and the Australian and New Zealand College of Mental Health Nurses and is an accredited New Zealand Nurses Organisation nurse clinician. Hughes has represented nursing in New Zealand and the Ministry of Health on national and international committees. She is also Full Colonel of the Royal New Zealand Nursing Corps.
Placement: The University of Pennsylvania
Mentors: Linda Aiken, Ph.D.
Project: Advanced Nursing Practice: Lessons and Comparisons for New Zealand
Description: Hughes explored the uses of advanced nursing practices in the U.S., and issues such as regulations, professional education, funding, and differences between states. She reviewed literature and government documents on advanced nursing practice, made site visits, and interviewed nursing leaders for context on the issues and on different models of nursing practice. She also conducted a second project on comparing New Zealand hospitals' performance against international benchmarks, for which she replicated an analysis of the International Hospital Outcome Consortium Research using New Zealand data.