Senior nurse manager jobs should be filled by nursing staff rather than outside managers, members of the Royal College of Nursing have voted.

The Nursing Times reports that delegates at the RCN annual congress voted 'overwhelmingly' in favour of a motion to make nursing directors solely responsible for line management of nurses. Now it will be considered for adoption as official policy by the RCN council.

The introduction of general management roles to hospital trusts has fallen out of favour since it was introduced in the past decade. A Nursing Times survey conducted in November found overwhelming dissatisfaction with the current system of line management, where nursing directors are secondary to general management teams. Over two thirds of respondents said they had never seen their nursing director on the ward, whilst one third said that nursing directors had a lower status than medical directors.

At the Prime Minister's Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery, the RCN said that nursing directors should have more say over their workforce. The RCN recommended that nursing directors should decide both the size and the skill mix of nursing staff at their trusts.

Howard Catton, head of policy development and implementation at the RCN said: "We are moving away from what we saw in the 1980s where there was questioning of the role of clinical management. I'm very pleased that we are where we are in that regard."

"No other profession - teachers, police - would tolerate being line managed by someone from outside."