No nurses selected to lead NHS 10-year reform

Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting has this week announced the formation 11 new working groups to help build the plan.

Each group has been designated two co-chairs – one from either the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) or NHS England, and one external person.

The list of co-chairs includes several doctors but no one from the nursing profession.

Leading nursing academic Professor Alison Leary turned to social media to flag the issue with Mr Streeting.

In her post on X, Professor Leary said the exclusion of nurses had come despite them being the “biggest workforce” and “key to delivering any reform”.

She told Nursing Times that her main concern was about “nursing not being seen as having subject matter expertise or irrelevant, rather than representation”.

The snub comes in the same week that the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) told the UK Covid-19 Inquiry how it had been left out of key discussions during the pandemic.

The inquiry heard how there had been a “lack of engagement” with the RCN, particularly around the development and updating of infection prevention and control (IPC) guidance.

Explaining why this was an issue, Rose Gallagher, professional lead for IPC at the RCN, told the inquiry: “It’s absolutely critical that nursing as the largest part of the professional workforce is there, and we are as able to provide insight and intelligence and critical thinking to those situations as our medical colleagues are as well.”

Meanwhile, Nursing Times also reported last year on concerns that the nursing profession had been excluded from the Elective Recovery Taskforce, which was launched by the former government to guide its work on tackling the patient backlog caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Responding to the latest concerns, a DHSC spokesperson did not explain why there were no nurse co-chairs but said nurses would be part of the wider membership of the working groups for the 10 Year Health Plan.

They said: “We have not yet published the full membership of the working groups.

“The groups will include people that bring a wide range of perspectives on the health system – including our brilliant nurses – as we work to build a health service fit for the future.”

Information about the full membership of the groups, as well as their terms of reference, is expected to be published in December.