A member of the Care Quality Commission (CQC) has announced that 2010's new regulatory regime will place a stronger focus on feedback from nurses and on the quality of nursing care.

Ann Close, national clinical adviser to the CQC, told Nursing Times that the regulator's new five-year regime for the NHS may include a special review on the quality of nursing care. The CQC unveiled its five-year plan to improve safety and effectiveness of care yesterday.

"It's about how care is delivered" said Close, "and nurses are the people who are doing a lot of that immediate care with patients.''

Ms Close said that any review on nursing care would include an evaluation of professional development for nurses, particularly in providing them with the leadership skills to progress into nurse manager jobs. "Nurses can't deliver good quality care if they don't have the leadership development they need", she said.

Nurses will also be called upon to give additional feedback into peer reviews of services, as part of the CQC's plan to develop more specialist clinical criteria to help "differentiate good from poor care and safe from unsafe practice.'' Professionals in social care jobs will also be invited to take part in future peer reviews of health services. One of the major changes of the new regime will be that clinicians will work in multi-disciplinary teams to carry out peer reviews of services they do not work in - this practice is currently being used by some teams in the UK, but Ms Close said this system could be extended to "most aspects of care.''