Speaking following the roundtable at the Department of Health and Social Care, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive, Professor Nicola Ranger said:
“The health secretary heard directly from nursing staff about how best to transform our NHS. We are the largest workforce inside the health service, delivering the vast majority of care, and our clinical skills and knowledge are priceless. For the government’s plan to succeed, our profession must be valued as thinkers as well as do-ers. Last night, we demonstrated that our profession is full of ideas and transformative thinking and I was very proud of the individuals who represented nursing to the highest levels of government.
“Our members were honest in their assessment: the nursing profession is integral to delivering the government’s 10 Year Plan, but workforce shortages and chronic underinvestment have caused unbearable pressures, leaving nursing staff unable to do their jobs in hospitals and the community in the way they would want. Meanwhile, an out of date pay structure leaves them feeling undervalued and trapped. They told the secretary of state that there is no route to transforming services that doesn’t have nursing at its heart, underpinned by new investment to stabilise and grow the workforce.
“Nursing staff were pleased to engage in a constructive conversation with the secretary of state and make their case, but it is now up to him and others to act on their expertise. Our profession is wary of grand plans that have no real detail or funding. As the latest figures show student nurse numbers have plunged to a record low, the urgency for government to deliver couldn’t be plainer.”
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Notes to editors
Nursing staff, from various levels of seniority and across a range of NHS services, working shared their expertise about how the government can deliver its NHS reforms.
In attendance were student nurses, newly qualified nurses, mental health nurses, community nurses and nurses working in acute services, including emergency departments.
Those attending were from various levels of seniority and across all of England.
The RCN represents hundreds of thousands of nursing staff working in the NHS in England.
