Bachelor of Nursing

Palliative care nurse Paula King hopes that one day she too can inspire a new generation of trainee nurses.

 “Hospice for me is about acknowledging the person and their life and reaffirming their life even though they are in their end stages. There are social, spiritual and cultural considerations as well as their physical and care needs,” she says.

 “Hospice delivers such a fantastic service to the community as a whole, not just the patients. We get to deal with the families a lot as well.”

Despite feeling like a novice, Paula says WITT’s nursing tutors prepared her well for the new graduate position.

She feels the lecturers genuinely believed what they were teaching, shared their own experiences and, because of the class sizes, were able to give one-on-one attention to students.
They inspired Paula greatly and she one day dreams of becoming a nursing tutor. “I can’t imagine anything more rewarding than seeing what they see in terms of changes in the students over the course of three years.”

Paula is now focused on doing the job well and learning as much as she can. But she also has other aims. “I would like to see more Māori accessing the hospice service and I would also like to see more Māori in the nursing workforce, because we are so under represented.”