A renewed focus on school nursing

Breaking news at the 2023 Chief Nursing Officer's summit was that school nursing, alongside other public health nurses will come under the professional leadership of the Chief Nursing Officer (CNO). This is exciting and very welcome news after the gap in leadership that was left following the retirement of the chief public health nurse in 2022. This announcement came along with a high-level overview of the CNO Vision which will focus on supporting and protecting the health of our nation. One of the five priorities is prevention, protection, promotion and reducing health inequalities. Ruth May (CNO) stated that it is clear that all nurses, midwives and nursing associates have a critical public health role and importantly that work is required to ensure that we have the right capacity in our specialist public health workforce which includes school nursing. She commented on the commitment in the NHS workforce plan to increase training places and stated she had ‘fire in me to do more’. It was humbling that improving access to school nurses was among the priorities that young people shared in their presentation to the summit.