Queen's nurses to double in number | nursing times

The number of community nurses holding the title of Queen’s Nurse will double over the next six months, from 70 to 140. The Queen’s Nursing Institute, which bestows the title, said it had

received record levels of nurses registered their interest in applying for the title. Speaking at a meeting in London last week, attended by 35 Queen’s Nurses, QNI director Rosemary Cook

also announced that a flexible development programme for Queen’s Nurses would begin in 2010 and that regional groups of Queen’s Nurses would receive some financial support from the

institute. Nurses at the meeting were also asked by QNI fellow Dr Susan Hamer, director for health enterprise at Leeds University, to write a short summary encapsulating their vision of the

future of nursing. These ideas will inform the QNI’s response to the Prime Minister’s Commission on the Future of Nursing and Midwifery. QNI fellow Dame Donna Kinnair, a member of the PM’s

Commission, said Queen’s Nurses needed to consider how the profession needed to promote itself, noting that the public consultation undertaken by the commission had shown that the public is

still uncertain about what nurses do. “They don’t know about nurse prescribing and think that nurses ‘just follow doctors’ orders,” said Dame Donna.