Anne Brebner
Chief Clinical Advisor, Mental Health, Addiction and Suicide Prevention, Ministry of Health | Manatū Hauora
Doctor of Health Science
Dr Anne Brebner had worked in mental health for all her career when she first became aware of AUT’s Doctor of Health Science. At the time, she was in a senior leadership role at Counties Manukau District Health Board, and as part of this role was responsible for overseeing the application of mental health legislation across the region. Despite the scale of responsibility, Anne began reflecting on how her voice was received in clinical leadership settings.
“As a nurse in a district wide leadership role, I felt I needed a bit more weight behind me to get people to listen to what I was saying. My clinical experience was extensive, but it didn’t always feel like it was enough to influence decision-making at the highest levels.”
That reflection coincided with a broader personal question. Nearing the later stage of her career, Anne was thinking about what contribution she still wanted to make to mental health nursing – a field that had changed significantly over the decades she had worked in it.
Encouragement from her manager, combined with conversations with Professor Brian McKenna from AUT, helped turn that intention into action. Rather than needing a fully formed research idea from the outset, Anne was drawn to a programme that allowed her thinking to develop over time.
“That was important for me. I didn’t start with an ‘aha’ topic – I started with values. I wanted to do something that left mental health nursing in a better place than I found it. Whatever roles I had throughout my career, I always wanted to leave things in a better place, and that was how I felt about the doctorate. I wanted to do something that demonstrates mental health nursing can do better. And so my doctoral thesis interrogated how nurses can be better at de-escalation and reducing aggression in acute mental health units. It was very applied research, and it’s still being used.”
A new way of thinking
Anne found the taught component of the Doctor of Health Science both challenging and rewarding.
“It’s a doctorate, so it’s demanding. The first part of the degree is course-based, and you join a cohort of people for class-based lectures and opportunities to share learning with people in similar roles across the country and in different areas of work but with similar ways of thinking. That suited me. I'm somebody who will just embrace new things, so I enjoyed it. It also made me realise how different academic writing is from clinical writing.”
After completing her Doctor of Health Science mid-2022, she soon stepped into her current role as chief clinical advisor for mental health, addiction and suicide prevention at the Ministry of Health | Manatū Hauora – the first nurse to be formally appointed in this position. While she doesn’t attribute her role to the qualification alone, Anne sees doctoral study as pivotal in shaping how she engages with complexity, leadership and influence.
“A doctorate gives you a way of thinking. It changes how you critique, how you articulate things in a way that other people can understand, how you take feedback and how you contribute to difficult conversations. When you do doctoral study, you embark on something that opens your mind to thinking differently. That’s been incredibly significant in my work. I think it has given me the confidence and the impetus to stretch myself more.”
Advice for other students
Anne has some great advice for other students who are considering doctoral study.
“You have to have a very tolerant home life because doctoral study is a very selfish endeavour.”
Trust your supervisors, she stresses.
“I gave my entire trust to my two supervisors. They were insistent that I did each chapter of my thesis and then, when that was ticked off, we moved on to the next chapter, and then we did a run-through at the end. For me, that was a real exercise in patience, but I thought these guys know what they're doing. They get people through this work all the time – I'm sure they must be right. So, I just trusted it, and it certainly served me well in the end. Your supervisors are there for a reason, you just have to trust them.”
