Nurses, colleagues and members of the public have been invited to share their experiences of the NHS to help shape the government’s 10-year plan for the health service.
It comes after the new chief nursing officer (CNO) for England appealed directly to primary and community nurses to get ready to have their say when the government launched its engagement exercise.
In what the government is calling ‘the biggest national conversation about the future of the NHS since its birth’, people are being asked to share their views, ideas and experiences via the online platform Changes.NHS.uk – which will be live until early 2025 and available to access via the NHS App.
The engagement exercise will be used guide the government’s ‘10 Year Health Plan’ which will be published in Spring 2025.
The plan will underline the government’s three big shifts in healthcare: hospital to community, analogue to community, and sickness to prevention.
Professor Nicola Ranger, Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary and chief executive, said the government must use its review to provide ‘specific commitments’ for nurses which stabilise the profession.
‘The last decade has been characterised by widespread staff shortages, collapsing nurse recruitment and worsening morale,’ she warned.
‘The next 10 years must promise to be brighter, but that will require new investment alongside any reforms.’
She added: ‘A shift to community care and a preventative health model is going to need tens of thousands more nurses.
‘The RCN will be encouraging all of its members to share their expert views and put nursing at the heart of the 10-year plan.’
The plan is set to include new ‘neighbourhood health centres’ which aim to bring preventive care closer to communities, with patients able to see district nurses, health visitors, family doctors and other health specialists ‘under the same roof’, the government said.
Writing in a department of health and social care (DHSC) blog post today Professor Deborah Sturdy, chief nurse for adult social care, urged social care staff to share their views in the exercise and stressed her plans to work closely with the new CNO.
‘Rest assured, your views will play a vital role in shaping the government’s 10-Year Health Plan to build a health and care system fit for the future.’
Opportunities for using wearable tech, like smart watches, to help patients with diabetes or high blood pressure to monitor their own health at home will also be considered.
Health and social care secretary Wes Streeting said: ‘Today the NHS is going through the worst crisis in its history. But while the NHS is broken, it’s not beaten. Together, we can fix it.’
He added: ‘In order to save the things we love about the NHS; we need to change it. Our 10 Year Health Plan will transform the NHS to make it fit for the future, and it will have patients’ and staff’s fingerprints all over it.
‘I urge everyone to go to Change.NHS.uk today and help us build a health service fit for the future.’
The government also aims to create a more modern NHS by establishing a ‘single patient record’, which summarises patient’s health information, test results and letters all through the NHS App.
New laws are scheduled to be introduced to make NHS patient health records available across all GP surgeries, NHS Trusts and ambulance services in England, with the goal of speeding up patient care and reducing medication errors.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said patients have been ‘battling against a broken system for over a decade’ and that ‘it’s time to roll up our sleeves and fix it’.
He stressed the need for healthcare professionals to shape the 10 Year Plan to ‘put patients first’ and deliver the care the nation needs.
‘So, let’s be the generation that took the NHS from the worst crisis in its history and made it fit for the future,’ he said.
Preparations for the 10 Year Health Plan follow from Lord Ara Darzi’s independent report into the health service, which sounded the alarm over declining community nurse numbers and the lack of investment into preventative healthcare services.
In his major review into the NHS, Lord Darzi warned that insufficient investment into community services and the nursing workforce had left the health service in a ‘critical condition’.
The launch of the engagement exercise for the 10 Year Health Plan will build on Darzi’s findings which are being described by government as the next step in delivering a health service ‘fit for the future’.
Earlier this month England’s new CNO Duncan Burton appealed to primary and community care nurses to help inform the government’s 10-year plan for the health service by sharing examples of good practice and innovation.
