Green light for new nursing associate role

A new role that will sit alongside existing nursing care support workers and fully-qualified registered nurses to deliver hands-on care moved a step closer today as Health Education England (HEE) published the response to its recent consultation on the Nursing Associate role.

The consultation proved popular, attracting over 1,000 responses from individuals including patients, members of the public and a wide range of organisations including professional bodies, trade unions, health care and social care providers and commissioners of healthcare. The role will be given the title ‘Nursing Associate’

Professor Lisa Bayliss-Pratt, Director of Nursing and Deputy Director of Education and Quality, HEE said:

Our consultation has shown that there is a real appetite for this role, which we firmly believe can provide a real benefit to the nursing and care workforce across a range of settings and play a key role in the delivery of patient care with safety at its heart.

This new role has the potential to transform the nursing and care workforce - making sure the role has a clear entry and progression point will be crucial in its development. 

The role is neither a panacea for future workforce supply, or a substitute for increasing the supply of graduate registered nurses – and throughout the process we sought to reassure people that patient safety remains paramount and is a determining factor that underlines the role.

We do need to protect what we value across the nursing and care profession but we also need to collectively agree that we can’t always hold on to what we have done in the past – change is inevitable.  The role will play an important part in the delivery of future healthcare and meet the diverse health needs of people up and down the country.

I would like to express my personal thanks to everyone who took part in the consultation and took the time to express their views on the scope of this new role.

In order to get the implementation of the Nursing Associate role right, HEE intends to appoint ‘test sites’.

Five workshops will take place in England in July so that HEE can engage with stakeholders on the scope of practice of the new role. Early test sites will recruit 1,000 students to start training for the new role in December 2016.