Nursing 2030 vision

The Chief Nursing Officer's long term strategy to shape the future of the nursing workforce.


Nursing 2030 Vision at a glance

Our Vision

Our Vision is about preparing a nursing workforce that will be ready and able to meet people's needs as we move towards 2030. It achieves this through focusing effort on the key themes that emerged from a national engagement process, the direction of travel for health and social care policy in Scotland, and national and international evidence.

While the Vision's themes by no means represent the whole picture on what needs to happen to nursing as we move towards 2030, they help to focus our thinking as we prepare nurses to meet the population's needs now and in the future.

The Vision highlights the need for action across three main areas.

Personalising Care

As we move towards 2030, nursing will:

  • be a personalised, rights-based service embedded within a caring and compassionate professional relationship with individuals and communities
  • focus not only on people's immediate perceived problems, but also take into account their wider physical, psychological, social, family and community life to make a real and lasting difference to their health and wellbeing
  • be prepared for increasingly technological environments, with nurses equipped with the technical and communication skills they need to support patients and enable their self- management potential.

Preparing Nurses for Future Needs and Roles

As we move towards 2030, nursing will:

  • be better understood by the public, enhancing their knowledge of how nursing can benefit them and increasing nursing's appeal as a career option
  • provide the flexible and effective responses the population needs now and in the future through transformation of roles
  • retain a focus on supporting people through periods of acute ill health in hospital and in the community, but increasingly will also be about prevention, addressing wider issues around promoting health and wellbeing, tackling inequalities and supporting parity of esteem between physical and mental health care
  • explain to the public and fellow professionals the rationale and benefits of nurse-led care.

Supporting Nurses

As we move towards 2030, nursing will:

  • provide clear and exciting career opportunities and trajectories, supported by the right education and development
  • promote partnerships between practitioners and researchers to expand the evidence base for high-quality and effective nursing practice
  • put in place measures to protect and promote nurses' physical and mental health and wellbeing, finding ways to help nurses stay healthier and fitter for longer so they are enabled to have long, successful and highly satisfying careers meeting the needs of the people of Scotland
  • ensure practitioners are supported, enabled, empowered and listened to, and that they have access to ongoing supervision appropriate to their roles
  • have in place systems of assurance that ensure consistency of standards across Scotland without losing the essence of compassionate, personalised, rights-based care.

Next Steps …

All of the issues addressed in the Vision will be reflected in a detailed action plan describing how we intend to make the Vision's ideas a reality over the short, medium and long terms.

Contact

Email: Rachel Aitchison, rachel.aitchison@gov.scot

Phone: 0300 244 4000 – Central Enquiry Unit

The Scottish Government
St Andrew's House
Regent Road
Edinburgh
EH1 3DG

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