Bohm, who has received the honour for services to health, began nursing in 1967, and has since gone on to become a key founder and leader of quality improvement and quality assurance systems in health care in New Zealand.
She helped set up the Health Quality & Safety Commission in 2010 and became its chief adviser for quality and safety in 2011, a post she still holds.
Earlier national leadership roles included senior advisor at the Health Funding Authority, principal advisor at the Ministry of Health, and inaugural chief advisor on the ministry’s quality improvement committee.
She started New Zealand’s first-ever quality improvement science education programme while at HQSC, and helped develop the Health and Disability Services (Safety) Standards.
In 2007 she directed the establishment of the first National Mortality Review Committee. She has been an active member of the Australasian Institute of Clinical Governance, the Joint Commission International, and the Australian Association for Quality in Health Care.
Bohm has also been a leader in advancing consumer participation in the design, delivery and evaluation of health and disability services. She is committed to implementing HQSC’s strategic priority to improve health equity and Māori health.
Other nursing and health-related honours include:
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Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit
NGATEPAERU MARSTERS, for services to midwifery and Pacific communities
Ngatepaeru Marsters has played an important role in the development of New Zealand’s Pasifika midwifery workforce.
A midwife for 25 years, Marsters is a Cook Island Māori, who began her career as a lead maternity carer in South Auckland. Later she spent nine years at the Auckland University of Technology’s (AUT’s) south campus focused on developing the Pasifika midwifery workforce.
This was a collaboration between AUT and Counties Manukau District Health Board (now Health NZ Counties). Since 2014, she has helped to develop this collaboration into a national initiative that has doubled numbers of practising Pasifika midwives.
She also played a key role in a grassroots Pasifika midwives’ group known as the “Aunties” that provides a mentoring programme which practises Pacific village values.
She is a foundation member of Pasifika Midwives Aotearoa and a member of the College of Midwives’ national board.
Her work has centred on improving outcomes for whānau through advocacy, and providing a safe service by an appropriate workforce to bring about positive change.
Marsters is a member of the Tagata Moana Maternity Trust in Māngere, South Auckland, which, together with Turuki Healthcare and Nga Hau o Māngere Birthing Centre, provide maternity care and a community-led wraparound service for whānau.
HARIATA VERCOE, for services to Māori, health, and the community
Hariata Vercoe (Ngāti Pikiao, Ngāti Kea/Ngāti Tuara, Ngāti Whakaue, Ngāti Manawa, Ngāti Makino, Te Rarawa) was born and raised in Rotorua, and over 40 years has provided her community with leadership and a range of services, particularly in Māori health.
As chief executive officer of Korowai Aroha Health Centre, a kaupapa Māori health provider in Rotorua, since 2012, her focus is on making sure services are accessible and welcoming to whānau.
She is also a layperson member of the Nursing Council, appointed by the health minister for a three-year term in 2021.
Vercoe has established a number of successful health and social service programmes including Tāne Takitu Ake for Māori men, respiratory and diabetes services, and hāpū mama and community Māori nursing services. She is also a trustee for the Rotorua Community Hospice.
(See co-editor Renee Kiriona’s interview with Hariata Vercoe.)
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King’s Service Medal
TINA GILBERTSON, for services to midwifery
Tina Gilbertson has contributed to the midwifery profession as a leader and educator in the far south for more than 30 years.
“It’s a very privileged place to be, to be with a family, with a mother as they welcome their child to the world,” she told the Otago Daily Times.
She registered as a midwife in the 1980s and for 28 years provided community and hospital-based care to pregnant women and babies throughout the Otago region.
Gilbertson held a number of midwifery roles for the Otago District Health Board, including acting service leader, maternity service manager and midwifery director between 2003 and 2006, during which she developed a midwifery professional development and recognition programme, which was subsequently adopted throughout New Zealand health institutions.
She has served as a lecturer at both the Dunedin School of Medicine and the Otago Polytechnic, and has held a number of senior roles in the Southern District Health Board since 2007, including knowledge centre manager, acting and deputy chief nursing and midwife officer, and director of quality.
From 2022, Gilbertson was the nursing director of Central Otago health services at Dunstan Hospital in Clyde, shifting into a quality and patient safety role in 2025 while mentoring her successor.
TERRY O’REGAN, for services to nursing and the community
From Haast in the south to Karamea in the north, Terry O’Regan has served the West Coast for more than 40 years as a public health nurse.
He trained in psychiatric and general nursing, practising initially in Christchurch from the 1960s before transferring to Greymouth to complete the general nursing programme and working in all areas of Greymouth Hospital.
He was appointed district nurse in Haast in the early 1980s, utilising his broad experience in psychiatric, emergency and general nursing.
Recognising the need for rural nurses to have time away for study and holidays, he became the relief rural health nurse for the entire West Coast for more than 20 years, travelling the distances in his campervan.
His rural nursing experience and skill in palliative care and support has allowed rural people to stay in their homes and communities when unwell.
O’Regan served on the Grey District Council for the eastern ward for one term.
PAPALI’I SEIULI JOHNNY SIAOSI, for services to health and the Pacific community
Based in Auckland, Papali’i Seiuli Johnny Siaosi has been a transformative leader in Pacific health and wellbeing, particularly in the field of mental health and addiction.
Siaosi has built on his own experiences as a survivor of abuse to advocate for and support both survivors and those who experience mental health issues and addictions.
He is a Pacific matua (elder) and consumer advisor for Takanga A Fohe Pacific Mental Health and Addictions Services with Te Whatu Ora.
Siaosi is also matua/co-founder and chair of ThreeVillage1Island — a national network of Pacific people in Aotearoa with lived experience of disability, addiction and mental illness, working on solutions to these issues based in Pacific cultures. “When we honour lived experience as expertise, healing becomes our shared language,” he says.
Another of Siaosi’s roles was as a Pacific advisor to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State and Faith-based Institutions.