The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has appointed its acting chief nursing officer to take on the role permanently.
Lynn Woolsey has been acting in the role since September 2024, after previous postholder Professor Nicola Ranger stepped up to be chief executive and general secretary of the college.
“Outdated perspectives are influencing children in school today to choose not to go into nursing”
Lynn Woolsey
Previously, from September 2023, Ms Woolsey had been the RCN’s deputy chief nurse, and before that had been a member of the RCN Northern Ireland board.
This week, the RCN announced that Ms Woolsey had been made its substantive chief nursing officer.
It is the role of the RCN chief nursing officer to provide strategic leadership for nursing with a focus on workforce, practice and regulation.
Ms Woolsey said among her priorities would be improving the approach to workforce planning in nursing in the UK.
“We have patients being packed into every space available – workforce planning is based on the budget available, and not on patient need,” she said.
“As a college, we need to define and map what the future looks like – for the profession, for the nursing workforce, for the membership, for patients and for society. Investment in nursing brings so many benefits.”
In addition, Ms Woolsey said she wanted to address the public perception of nursing, noting that this had “not kept pace with modernisation” in the profession.
“It’s important because this antiquated view of nursing impacts on our future,” she said.
“Outdated perspectives are influencing children in school today to choose not to go into nursing.
“The more accurate the image of nursing is, the better the chances that students will choose nursing as their future profession.”
She said she believed the RCN had the ability to “generate large changes”.
Before she joined the RCN leadership team, Ms Woolsey was deputy chief nursing officer in the Department of Health Northern Ireland.
She also spent a decade at Southern Health and Social Care Trust in assistant director roles.
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