Northern Ireland's Health Minister, Robbie Butler, has formally launched two initiatives for the nursing workforce: a Nursing and Midwifery Leadership Toolkit and a Mental Health Nursing Model titled 'Partnering for Wellbeing and Enabling Recovery.'
The toolkit is designed for nurses and midwives leading operational teams, packaging guidance, resources and tools intended to strengthen leadership capability and confidence. The department says the goal is a workforce equipped to deliver safe, high-quality, person-centred care as demand and expectations keep rising.
The mental health model sets out a vision for mental health nursing inside a changing health and social care system, placing the specialty at the heart of neighbourhood-based, person-centred services provided closer to home rather than only in hospital settings.
Both were launched at this year's Chief Nursing Officer Conference, held under the theme 'Reset, Reform, Reimagine: Nursing and Midwifery Leadership for a Sustainable HSC.' Butler told the conference the voice of nursing and midwifery is crucial to improving services while staying true to the values that brought staff into public service — a message that lands as health systems across the UK and Canada alike report strain on nurse recruitment and retention.
