For Judy Kilpatrick, a pioneer in the field of nursing education, becoming a Dames Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit was as embarrassing as it was exciting.
Nursing in New Zealand would not be what it is today without Kilpatrick, whose contributions to the development of nursing education and practice opened the door to nurse practitioners and prescribing rights.
Speaking to Newshub ahead of the release of the Queen's Birthday Honours on Monday, Kilpatrick - who officially retired last year after almost 50 years in the nursing profession - admitted she was "embarrassed" by the significant milestone.
"I was very amazed, excited and humbled - and embarrassed," she told Newshub.
"It may sound trite to say, but it's never about one person - nursing in particular is a very collaborative profession… I'm very proud to be a nurse and I'm very proud of the nurses I've had the privilege of working with."
Kilpatrick, a former associate professor at the University of Auckland, was bestowed the title for her services to nursing education.
Throughout her five-decade career, Kilpatrick was a pioneer in the development of nursing and nursing education in New Zealand. As the chair of the Nursing Council of New Zealand, she worked to develop an academic framework that brought nursing into mainstream academia, and co-founded the University of Auckland's School of Nursing in 1999. Kilpatrick served as Head of School from 2002 to 2017, leading it to the impressive rank of 32nd-best nursing school in the world by 2018.
"That actually gave an impetus to provide the clinical education that we needed," she told Newshub. "We ended up with nurse practitioners, with their Masters degree, able to operate independently. And that gave rise to a number of other positions - nurses with prescribing rights, and the development of specialist roles for nurses.
"It was a mixture of getting the academic framework right, getting into a University of Auckland setting within the medical health science faculty, and developing such strong programmes that were very much underpinned by research."
The School became the largest provider of postgraduate nursing courses in New Zealand, provided the national programme for Māori nurses in disease state management, and led the national rural health postgraduate nursing programme.
Recently, Kilpatrick led a delegation to Tonga to help develop a graduate education package to deliver training to nurses. She has been a Board member of the Cancer Society Auckland Division and the Rural Health Institute. Internationally, Kilpatrick has held leadership roles with the Boards of Universitas 21, the Australasian Council of Deans of Nursing and Midwifery, and the International Association for Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice.
However, her extensive work has frequently taken Dame Judy away from family. She is looking forward to celebrating the achievement and spending more time with her loved ones in her well-deserved retirement.
"I'm very [excited] to spend some time with my close friends and family. A lot of my work took me away from home, I've got grandchildren now - just to be able to spend some time and be very grateful for what I've got."
Kilpatrick's efforts earned her the title of Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the 1998 Queen's Birthday Honours.
