A ‘save the date’ has come through from England's Chief Nursing Officer (CNO), Ruth May, for her 2020 Summit, which will provide an opportunity to reflect on the vision that she outlined in March 2019. The CNO's early vision was to establish an England-wide collective leadership model with a focus on transformational leadership, research and innovation (NHS England, 2019a). She developed this vision over the course of 2019, following the publication of the long-term plan, and has previously stated:
‘Collective leadership is about everyone taking responsibility not just for their own job or role, but for the success of their team and their organisation as a whole. It is about ensuring that all voices are valued and contribute to the conversations where decisions are made.’
I have had a number of conversations recently with colleagues who are preparing for presentations as part of leadership programme applications. I undertook the Florence Nightingale Foundation (FNF) Leadership scholarship, which was, without a doubt, the programme that had the most influence on my career, and the experience that I draw the most from in my everyday professional life.
The profile of leadership in nursing has never been so high. In 2018, the Burdett Trust, World Health Organization (WHO) and International Council of Nurses launched a 3-year global campaign, ‘Nursing Now’, to improve the profile and status of nursing worldwide (Nursing Now, 2019). It seeks to empower nurses to tackle current health challenges and maximise their contribution to universal health coverage. One of the five areas that the campaign has focused on has been development and recruitment of more nurses into leadership roles.
The campaign was based on the Triple Impact report (All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Global Health, 2016), which concluded that strengthening nursing will have the triple impact of improving health, promoting gender equality and supporting economic growth. The Lancet (2019) recently highlighted the value of nursing, reminding us that nurses and midwives make up around 20 million of the global health workforce, yet nursing remains under appreciated. This could be because of gender stereotypes:
‘Most nurses are women, and nursing is still viewed by many as women's work and as a soft science, rather than as the highly skilled profession it really is.’
The APPG on Global Health (2016) suggested that experienced nurse leaders are needed in the right places to help nursing deliver its potential and ensure that the distinctive nursing perspective is included in policymaking and decision-making. The Nursing Now global movement aims to support nurses and midwives at every stage in their careers to be influential leaders, through creating more ways they can be nurtured and recognised alongside other young professionals. This includes establishing large-scale programmes to develop nurse leaders to engage more effectively in policymaking and decision-making. The goal of the recently launched Nursing Now Nightingale Challenge is that by the end of 2020, there will be 20 000 nurses and midwives across the world equipped and empowered to spearhead a cultural change of influential leadership in their profession (Burdett Trust, 2019). The hope is for every health employer around the world to pledge to provide leadership and development training for a group of their young nurses and midwives during 2020, the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife, to support them as practitioners, and enhance their skills as advocates and leaders in health.
The Lancet (2019) also acknowledged the potential opportunities in meeting the global health challenges with strong nursing leadership. For example, provision of care by lung nurse specialists has been shown to improve clinical outcomes for patients with lung cancer. Such findings, it is suggested, can drive policymakers to strengthen investment in nursing, and cost analyses can help make an economic case for supporting the profession.
The Lancet (2019) concludes that ‘if you enhance nursing, you enhance health care’, and that we are a long way from realising the full value of nursing. The baton to pick up as nurse leaders is to lead the delivery of the CNO's early vision to establish an England-wide collective leadership model with a focus on transformational leadership, research and innovation. We also need to showcase the evidence and impact of what nurses and midwives do and to ensure they are enabled, resourced and supported to meet the world's health needs.