Central to the Chief Nursing Officer for England’s (CNO) vision is ensuring the nursing and midwifery collective voice is valued and listened to in all decision-making conversations.

The critical role the professions have played during the COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of this now, more than ever: strong, visible nursing leadership, with oversight of the quality and safety agendas is essential to ensuring the delivery of the Long-Term-Plan across the system.

To achieve this, an engaged and empowered workforce is crucial to ensuring changes continue to be driven forward. Evidence shows that collective leadership approaches can harness and enable nursing and midwifery staff to improve the outcomes and experiences for individuals, families and populations, addressing local, regional and national unwarranted variations and inequalities.

This strong, collective voice can also drive forwards transformation across health and care sectors and organisational boundaries. To achieve this, all staff must be supported to recognise and embrace that they are leaders – no matter where they work, no matter what their role.

The Chief Nursing Officer for England’s vision is that we are much stronger as a profession when we come together. We can be central to influencing and leading a new healthcare model for the 21st century – collective leadership at its best. #teamCNO.

“Collective leadership is about everyone taking responsibility not just for their own job or role, but for the success of their team and their organisation as a whole. It is about ensuring that all voices are valued and contribute to the conversations where decisions are made.”

Ruth May, Chief Nursing Officer for England.

Visit the Shared Governance: Collective Leadership YouTube playlist to access a growing library of films and learn more about shared governance and collective leadership.