A network for chief nursing officers in leadership roles in integrated care boards (ICBs) was launched today, in a collaboration between the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) and the NHS Confederation.
The ICB Chief Nurse Network will connect the senior nurses from NHS organisations across England with the aim of developing clinical leadership within the integrated care system.
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Each of the 42 ICBs, which were formed under the Health and Care Act 2022, is made up of an executive board that includes a chief nursing officer.
As part of the QNI and NHS Confederation’s agreement to work more closely on areas of common interest including the ‘integration agenda’, the new network will connect chief nurses to enable collaborative work on a range of topics.
Dr Crystal Oldman, chief executive of the QNI, said that the network for chief nursing officers was launched because both organisations shared an ‘ambition to support the development of clinical leadership within integrated care systems, and to support the objectives behind integrating care, improving population health and tackling inequalities.’
Dr Oldman added that she was ‘very much looking forward to modelling a partnership way of working with the NHS Confederation’.
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Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said that the network has been created due to a recognition of ‘the need for a clinical leadership approach that focuses on building relationships, broad collaboration across provider organisations, and enhancing the transformation agenda across the system’.
‘It is intended that the network, facilitated and supported by NHS Confederation and the QNI, will enable chief nurses to share ideas, experience and learning as ICBs develop,’ he said.
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