Intended for healthcare professionals

Views And Reviews Provocations

Nursing—the wave of the future

BMJ 2018; 361 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.k2355 (Published 31 May 2018) Cite this as: BMJ 2018;361:k2355
  1. Nigel Crisp
  1. member, House of Lords, and chair, All Party Parliamentary Group on Global Health
  1. crisp{at}parliament.uk

Medicine will be enhanced by nurses taking on greater responsibility, says Nigel Crisp

Nurses are already more trusted by the public than doctors. What does the future hold? A recent report by a parliamentary group described how developing nursing worldwide would not only improve health but also make progress towards two other UN sustainable development goals: improving gender equity and strengthening economies.12

This Triple Impact report argued that nursing philosophy and practice were particularly well suited to the changing global burden of disease, with an increasing prevalence of non-communicable disease and comorbidity in older people. Nurses are educated to take a person centred, holistic view of health that considers psychological, social, and environmental aspects as well as the purely biomedical. Other professions—including, of course, medicine—also take this wider view, but for nurses it is at the centre of their philosophy.

Nurses typically are responsible for continuity of care and …

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