Better Health For All

By Wendy Nicholson, National Lead Nurse – Children, young people & Families & Deputy Head of World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Public Health Nursing and Midwifery.

Clearly, nursing is a diverse and far-ranging profession. The traditional stereotype of nursing and nurses is changing and the drive to provide care closer to home and really get serious about prevention has quite rightly put public health nursing in the spotlight.

When I pulled on my crisp new student nurse uniform in the early 1980s I could never have imagined I would find myself working in public health, as the focus and direction of travel for most nurses was gaining experience in hospitals before venturing into the ‘community!’ Like my peers and other nursing colleagues, I recognised that many of those hospital admissions were avoidable and many of the A&E visits could have been prevented.

Shifting the balance to upstream prevention and public health was certainly not a new phenomenon. Probably the most well-known nurse, Florence Nightingale, was a pioneer for prevention and indeed the use of evidence to underpin practice.

So much of Florence Nightingale’s legacy reinstates today with public health nurses and we know that there are many public health challenges, particularly for children and young people. We know giving children the best start in life and building resilience across the life course can improve outcomes – and this is where my passion lies.

For myself, moving to public health and focusing on prevention was a huge shift, I had my PICU mapped out. The catalyst for change was a small child who sadly will never know the difference she made to my nursing career. She arrived in A&E after being hit by a car. Her injuries were severe and she died soon after arrival. Like so many unintentional injuries her death was preventable and this made me re-think my career choices.

Public health nursing and the prevention agenda is vast. I have been fortunate to lead the development of new projects such as Sure Start and Teenage Pregnancy Prevention. Both have been challenging, but working with communities to support behaviour change and cultural norms was indeed rewarding!

Today, I find myself working for Public Health England as the National Lead Nurse for Children, Young People and Families and a Deputy Head of World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre for Public Health Nursing and Midwifery, working within the Nursing, Midwifery and Early Years directorate. This is an incredible role, and provides an opportunity to advocate for public health nurses who make a huge difference to individuals, community and population health.

Being a WHO Collaborating Centre for Public Health Nursing and Midwifery is an amazing opportunity to contribute to the global Sustainable Development Goals and to influence globally – ensuring prevention is a clear focus with public health nursing driving improvements.

It is quite apt that today I am with 400 nurse leaders at the Chief Nursing Officer summit in Liverpool – this city which is steeped in the history of public health. On International Women’s Day, we should take the time to reflect on great leaders such as Florence Nightingale. She was so much more than ‘the lady with the lamp’ – clearly a visionary for public health, nurses and prevention.

Let us never consider ourselves finished nurses….we must be learning all of our lives.
Florence Nightingale

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