Our strategic vision

Our priorities and goals for the coming five years

Who we are

The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) is the regulator for nurses and midwives in the UK. We are independent from the government. Our statutory objective is to:

Safeguard the health and well-being of people who use or need the services of nurses and midwives.

What we do

All of our activities are designed to help us meet our statutory objective.

We set and monitor the national education and training requirements required to qualify as a nurse or midwife. We maintain a register of all of the nurses and midwives in the UK and we decide who is able to call themselves a registered nurse or midwife. We set requirements for nurses and midwives to help them to provide safe and appropriate care and we take firm but fair action where those requirements have not been met. If necessary, we can remove a nurse or midwife from our register or restrict their right to practise as a nurse or midwife in the UK.

We educate and inform the public about what we do. We also communicate our message to nurses, midwives and their employers and we speak to the government and European Commission on public protection issues.

Our job is to protect the public. We work in partnership with nurses and midwives to help us achieve this.

How we will work in the future

Strategic context report 2010

 

The coming years will present new challenges. We will work to meet those challenges whilst improving our effectiveness so that we can continue to meet our statutory objective. We know that the environment in which nurses and midwives practise is changing.

  • Evolving public needs driven by economic pressures, growing inequalities, an ageing population and changing health conditions are putting new demands on the services of nurses and midwives. This is also likely to affect public expectations.
  • Advances in technology will provide both opportunities and challenges as we face the possibility of more sources of data, information and means of monitoring.
  • As the range of activities undertaken by nurses and midwives develops, it is essential that the NMC also evolves as their regulator. Regulation is not static and in the future we will need to be able to continue to meet the expectations of the public within an increasingly complicated regulatory environment. We will need to be mindful of changes to policy and ways of working in the health and social care sectors, in each of the four countries of the UK and internationally.

To do this we will need to be an effective, forward thinking and flexible regulator. This means that:

  • We will need to demonstrate the quality and impact of our work. This will include using evidence to support why we do what we do.
  • We are an accountable organisation and we have to be able to demonstrate that we provide value for money. We will need to show that our performance and expenditure is effective and we will provide the evidence to show this.
  • We will engage the public and listen to their needs. As an independent body, we will need to speak to the government, other regulators and European institutions. We will work to gain a powerful voice to help us influence others in the public interest.
  • We must influence the behaviour of nurses and midwives positively. We will work to achieve this by ensuring that everything we do is relevant, proportionate and based on evidence. We will also make sure that our communications are thoughtful and effective and we will look for evidence to show that our messages have been heard.
  • We work in partnership with others to achieve our statutory objective. To protect the public we must have open and effective relationships.
  • We will target our activities effectively by using available information and data sources. We will set out agreed priorities for our work and focus on achieving them.

The public and the people that we regulate must be able to trust the NMC and have confidence in what we do. We will seek reassurance, externally if necessary, that our operations, systems and methods are sound. We will also communicate our work so that people can have confidence in the care provided by nurses and midwives.

What this means for us

To achieve our way forward, we have already created a new vision, mission and set of values for the NMC which will inspire and shape how we work.

We are committed to realising the following goals by 2014:

  • Public protection will be at the centre of all of our activities. Our work will be designed around and measured against the benefits we can bring to the public.
  • We will have open and effective relationships that will enable us to work in the public interest.
  • Our staff will have the skills, knowledge and supporting systems needed to help us provide excellent services to the public and the people that we regulate.
Created date :
23/02/2010
Modified date :
23/02/2010