A new year for nursing

I will start by wishing the entire RCN family a happy 2024. I hope the festive period was restorative, but I know many of you will have continued to provide care for your patients during this time and your dedication will always be deeply appreciated.

In too many parts of the world, we’re witnessing unbearable conflict and loss of life with hospitals and other health care facilities becoming targets. I’d like to use this opportunity to repeat our condemnation of attacks on health care staff and facilities, wherever they take place. Nursing staff and other members of the health care profession are there to protect and treat people, they must be allowed to do their job without threat from military forces.

I was proud to attend the Ukraine Health Summit last year to support efforts to restore and deliver health services in Ukraine both during and beyond the current conflict, and I know this will continue to be important work in 2024.

Working alongside the global nursing community, both locally and internationally, is an absolute honour in my role. As the largest nursing union and professional body, we represent an incredibly diverse and dynamic workforce, and are instrumental in driving positive change for nursing staff around the world. 

In 2024, we have set a goal to improve the representation of nursing staff from diverse backgrounds. We aim to establish better connections with the nursing community worldwide. I am fully committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion.

I am excited to work with diaspora organisations such as the British Sikh Nurses and Association of South Asian Midwives, the Caribbean Nurses and Midwives Association, the British Indian Nurses Association-UK, and the Nigerian Nurses Association-UK. I look forward to meeting members of the British Arab and Nursing Midwifery Association UK later this year.

Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the Nepalese Nurses charitable event, and I was impressed by their incredible work in their communities. Our journey continues to create a more inclusive and diverse nursing community. We will work towards enhancing our representation of nursing staff educated overseas or belonging to a diasporic community. We will also strengthen our engagement with the global nursing movement.

2024 promises to be a big year for our movement and our profession. Already this month our members in Northern Ireland returned to picket lines alongside workers from other professions and trade unions. I know that RCN members from across the UK will be in solidarity with our colleagues in Northern Ireland as they fight for pay parity in the face of over 9 months of political inaction and failure. At the time of writing, we’re still waiting for the implementation of a pay deal in Northern Ireland, and we won’t stop fighting for this basic fairness.

For all of us in the UK, 2024 will see general election campaigning taking place. We will be lobbying parties and candidates to commit to supporting nursing, and making sure as many of our members as possible are registered to vote.

But we won’t be waiting for the prime minister to call a general election to make our voices heard.  We remain in dispute with the UK government over pay for NHS staff in England; the government in Scotland must do better to honour its commitments to reform nursing pay; the Welsh government must realise the full potential of the Nurse Staffing Levels (Wales) Act 2016; and the ongoing political impasse in Northern Ireland – which directly affects the lives of nursing staff - must be resolved.

The UK government’s consultation on a separate pay spine for NHS nursing staff in England opened earlier this month. I encourage all members on Agenda for Change contracts in England to contribute via our consultation form which will be opening in the coming days – keep an eye on our website for this. Your views will shape our response.

Our safe staffing summit led by RCN Chief Nurse Nicola Ranger and Chair of the RCN Professional Nursing Committee Rachel Hollis, held in December last year, is evidence of our commitment to continuing to fight for safe staffing. RCN members valued this event highly and felt it recognised the contributions of our nursing workforce in their different roles. It brought about a whole different conversation about tackling staff shortages in the working environment.

We will continue to lobby against any anti-immigration measures which adversely affect nursing staff and wider health and care services. These include attempts to raise the salary threshold for the skilled worker visa, which would be detrimental to so many of our internationally educated members, and proposals to prevent international students from bringing family members to the UK. At the same time, we will also be continuing to push back against unethical overseas recruitment practices, which we know are exploitative and harmful to many countries in the global south.

I'm proud to say that anti-racism work has begun in our College, and the new Equity, Diversity and Inclusion strategy is currently being prepared. Our Council leadership is working collaboratively together with the leadership and support from the General Secretary Pat Cullen, Chief Nurse Nicola Ranger, and the wider executive leadership team. I'm excited to see the results of this work announced to members at Congress 2024, which will take place in Newport, Wales.

Everything we do is ultimately driven by you, our members. Whether it’s on pay or safe staffing, or on issues you’re facing in your workplace, together we can achieve change. Whether you’re an RCN rep, part of a branch, involved in a forum or network or a student ambassador, we can work with you to achieve the solutions we need for a brighter future. And for anyone who is looking to get more active within the College, I urge you to take a look at our website and explore all the different options available to you to make a difference.

So then, as we look forward to another year, there’s plenty to do and much to look forward to. As always, I hope to see many of you at RCN events over the coming months. If you have any queries or want to get in touch, do feel free to contact me directly by emailing president@rcn.org.uk.