The final report of the Prime Minister’s Commission on the Future of Nursing has made 20 recommendations to improve its current system, among them is to regulate nursing and midwifery support workers and hire professionals to ensure high quality social care jobs are carried out to their full potential.

This will introduce some form of regulation of non-registered nursing and midwifery staff, including health care assistants and assistant practitioners. It is argued that this must be introduced to protect the public and ensure high quality care. Nurses and midwives must use it to guide their practice, adapting it to their work settings. In addition, regulators and employers must ensure that their codes, policies and guidance on nursing and midwifery support it.

Protecting the title ‘nurse’ is also high on the PM's agenda. The Nursing and Midwifery Council must take urgent steps to ensure public protection and safety and to allay current confusion about roles, titles and responsibilities, by protecting the title ‘nurse’ - limiting its use solely to nurses registered by the Council.

At number ten on the list, nursing people with long-term conditions is something the government want to focus on. The description states: "The redesign and transformation of health and social care services must recognise nurses’ leading role in caring for people with long-term conditions."

Care pathways must be commissioned for service users that maximise the nursing contribution. Nurses must be enabled to make direct referrals to other professionals and agencies, with all barriers that prevent them from utilising their full range of capacities and competencies to be removed.