Future clinical role of nurses in the United Kingdom.

Nursing, like the NHS, is at a crossroads. The NHS Plan sets out two directions for nursing, midwifery and health visiting, which on first sight may seem to be contradictory. The Plan sets out firmly what patients want, which is to get the fundamentals of care right—dignity and privacy, proper food and drink, help with personal hygiene. They want a nurse to be with them when they are sick and vulnerable. These are issues I am addressing by strengthening the role of the ward sister and charge nurse, and through the national clinical benchmarking project (see box 1). Yet the NHS Plan also sets out “The Chief Nursing OYcer’s 10 key roles for nurses” (box 2), roles which advance and extend the traditional parameters of nursing.