A pivotal year for our strategy to regulate, support and influence

We’ve published our latest corporate plan which sets out our priorities for the next year. This marks the halfway point of our strategy for 2020-2025.

Reducing our fitness to practise (FtP) caseload remains a top priority. We’ll also focus on modernising our regulatory processes, continuing to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), and supporting midwifery and nursing professionals to provide safe, kind and effective care.

The last two years have brought about some incredibly challenging circumstances for our professions. Like many health and care organisations, we concentrated on supporting professionals to provide the best possible care throughout the pandemic. This year will be pivotal in shifting our focus back onto delivering our strategic plans.

We need to know if we’re striking an effective balance in our work, and to understand what people think and feel about the NMC, and wider health and care services. That’s why we recently sought the views of five key audiences: nursing and midwifery professionals, the public, employers, students, and health and care partners. The feedback we received has helped to inform the development of our corporate plan and shape our priorities for the coming year.

Some of our key priorities

• FtP caseload - We’ll focus on dealing with concerns at the earliest opportunity and reducing our caseload. We’ll work on cases in a fair, timely and cost effective way by redesigning our regulatory processes, investing in additional resources to increase capacity in key areas, and working with employers to resolve cases quickly and locally.
• Regulatory reform - We’ll support the government’s drive to modernise the legislation that guides our work. This will help us to better support the professionals on our register and ensure people continue to receive the safe, effective and kind care they have a right to expect.
• EDI – We know there are systemic inequalities in health and care, as highlighted in Ambitious for Change research. For example, Black nurses and midwives are disproportionately referred into our FtP procedures by employers. Fairer processes will increase public confidence in us, and help us to influence change within the health and care sector.
• Promoting and upholding the highest professional standards – We’re working on projects to make sure our professions continue to uphold the high professional standards the public has a right to expect. These include a new set of ambitious post-registration standards for community nursing, new pre-registration education programme standards following our exit from the EU, a review of our English language requirements, and a review of advanced nursing practice.

Current pressures in health and care were echoed throughout the feedback we received from our five key audiences, and we’ve carefully considered these issues within our corporate plan. We’ll continue to support nurses and midwives who are facing challenges in the wake of the pandemic, contribute to quality assurance in light of recent maternity service reviews, and look at how we can manage within the increasingly complex social and economic environment we work in.

Andrea Sutcliffe, Chief Executive and Registrar of the NMC, said:

“The world looks very different than it did two years ago when we first agreed our strategy. Despite this, the NMC progressed several important projects in 2021-2022. These cover our post-registration standards, our pre-registration programme standards, our international registration process and more. We look forward to continuing this work over the coming years.

“We’re determined to deliver the key aims set out in our strategy, and this year will be pivotal in ensuring we do that. We’re ambitious about what we can achieve and will continue to listen to and engage with our professions, partners and the public. This will help us to be responsive to the changes in health and care.

“The pandemic has brought about many unforeseen challenges, and continues to place extraordinary pressure on health and care services. We’re so proud of nursing and midwifery professionals and students for the way they’ve adapted and innovated.

“By working together, I’m confident that we can deliver the ambitions in our strategy and continue to support nursing and midwifery professionals to deliver safe, effective and kind care for everyone.”

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