Introduction | Kupu whakataki
July 2026
The Nursing Council of New Zealand l Te Kaunihera Tapuhi o Aotearoa (the Council) sets scopes of practice and standards under the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003 (the Act). The principal purpose of the Act is to protect the health and safety of the public. The Nursing Council is responsible for fulfilling this purpose by ensuring nurses are fit and competent to practise their profession.
We are now consulting on new nurse practitioner (NP) and registered nurse (RN) prescriber standards of competence and proposed changes to the prescribed qualifications for NPs and RN prescribers. The Council wants your views to make sure it sets the right standards to protect the health and safety of health consumers.
The consultation is structured into three parts: RN prescriber standards of competence, NP standards of competence, and prescribed qualifications for NPs and RN prescribers. You do not need to answer all questions. Please answer the questions that are relevant to you.
Consultation closes at 5pm, Monday 7 September 2026.
The full consultation document including links to the standards of competence and prescribed qualifications we are consulting on is available here.
How to submit
You can choose to complete this survey or you can choose to provide more substantive feedback via a submission template (available here).
Confidentiality
If you are completing this questionnaire as an individual your responses will be anonymous unless you choose to give us your name. If you don't give your name, we will have no way of identifying who you are.
If you are completing this questionnaire on behalf of an organisation or group, we will ask you to provide your name and the name of the organisation. If you would like your responses kept confidential then please indicate this below.
If you are completing this questionnaire as an individual your responses will be anonymous unless you choose to give us your name. If you don't give your name, we will have no way of identifying who you are.
If you are completing this questionnaire on behalf of an organisation or group, we will ask you to provide your name and the name of the organisation. If you would like your responses kept confidential then please indicate this below.
What we will do with your submission
We will review all feedback and use it to inform advice to our Board. We will also publish a summary of the feedback on our website.
We will review all feedback and use it to inform advice to our Board. We will also publish a summary of the feedback on our website.