NMC welcomes mandate to regulate advanced nursing roles

Commenting on the commission’s recommendations, published today in the report Front Line Care, NMC chief executive and registrar professor Dickon Weir-Hughes said: “The commission has given the NMC a clear mandate to regulate advanced nursing practice and protect the title ‘nurse’.

“Both of these are issues which cause concern to the public because there is a lack of clarity and some confusion as to what the various job titles and the associated competencies imply,” he said.   

As previously reported by Nursing Times, the title of nurse is not protected legally and can therefore be used by other professions that are not registered nurses, such as dental or veterinary nurses.

Advanced nursing roles have increased significantly over recent years but with no formal definition or rules on what such roles should be, resulting in a wide variation in actual skills and responsibility among practitioners.

Professor Weir-Hughes also said: “We are pleased at the emphasis the commission has placed on the corporate responsibility nursing and midwifery leaders have for providing quality care through commissioning and providing services and to raising any concerns they may have at board level.

“The [NMC] code states that nurses and midwives must make the care of people their first concern and this applies equally to the director of nursing on a trust board designing services as it does to a band 5 nurse delivering care on a ward,” he added. 

“Finally, we are very pleased that the Commission strongly supports the NMC’s decision that from 2013 all newly qualified nurses must have a degree,” said professor Weir-Hughes.

Have your say

You must sign in to make a comment.