Nurses and those working in nurse manager jobs are being urged to sign a petition to ensure that the vital skills and expertise of nursing staff are not overlooked under new plans for commissioning healthcare.

The campaign, launched by the Nursing Times, aims to ensure that nurses are involved and represented at the highest level of the new GP commissioning consortia, which will be given the responsibility to make the bulk of decision making on NHS spending. The consortia, which is expected to be dominated by GPs, will be responsible for spending from April 2013.

As part of the campaign, Nursing Times has launched an online petition which calls for health secretary Andrew Lansley to make certain that any future consortia have representatives from the nursing profession on the board or on the top leadership tier.

The campaign statement says: "Nurses must be actively involved in the new commissioning consortia being set up from now until April 2013 and their involvement must be at the highest level. Nurses don't just deserve to be on the board because of their number, but because of their unique experience in the NHS."

It continues: "They have a different focus from GPs, with a strong emphasis on patient care and quality of patient experience and are the only professionals who deliver holistic patient care."

Maggie Boyd, NHS Derbyshire County's director of nursing and quality, said the campaign, titled 'A Seat on the Board campaign', provided nurses with a "great opportunity to show their worth."

"If we fail to take this opportunity, the profession's added value and a chance to retain the learning from primary care trust models will be lost. Good quality patient care remains central to decision making, whether that is at an individual patient care level or across the population," she said.