17/11/2025
Last week, Counties Manukau hosted the New Zealand Consult Liaison Nursing Symposium 2025, which brought together consult liaison nurses, advanced clinicians, leaders and partners in care from across the motu.
The theme of the day was ‘Professional identity and workforce growth: an invitation to look forward – how do we define ourselves, build capability and sustain a strong consult liaison workforce.’
Teresa Harris, Clinical Nurse Specialist, says consult liaison nurses often see patients and whaanau in crisis, and that makes resilience and flexibility important.
“Our team is called in for cases such as when a patient is delirious and hallucinating. We work across emergency departments, general hospital wards and community settings.
“We work very closely with our patients’ whaanau as often in these cases the patient is very unwell and so whaanau interaction is important.”, says Teresa.
The symposium provided a forum for everyone to learn from each other through case-based learning, collaboration and sharing ideas to strengthen and support our workforce.
Nat Woodward, Clinical Nurse Specialist, emphasises that excellent communication is essential in this role, which was a focus of the symposium.
“Rapport and whakawhanaungatanga (relationships and connection) are important in this role, but it is especially important to be able to kotahitanga (work together) with our whaiora (patients) and their whaanau to provide culturally safe interventions.”
Our Consult Liaison Nursing (CLN) team enjoyed the day with keynote speakers, workshops and discussion of strategies for professional development, inter professional collaboration and innovative models of practice.
A big thank you to our Counties Manukau staff involved in the planning and delivery of this successful national symposium event.
