https://www.gosh.nhs.uk/working-here/nursing/gosh-nursing-strategy-2023-to-2026/

GOSH Nursing Strategy 2023 to 2026

A blue image with the words "GOSH Nursing Strategy 2023 to 2026". There is an illustration of people in a circle holding hands.

Our vision for nursing at GOSH

We want our nurses to feel safe in our hands, and achieve joy at work.

Our nursing strategy, developed in collaboration with our nurses, children and young people, and colleagues throughout the hospital, sits alongside GOSH’s Above and Beyond Strategy 2020 to 2025 and the refreshed People’s Strategy 2023 to 2026, and defines our exciting vision for our nursing workforce over the next three years.  

The strategy sets out how we aim to transform the GOSH nursing experience, and centres on four key strategic priorities that our nurses and patients have said are important to them:

  1. Grow our skilled and inquisitive workforce.
  2. Amplify the nursing voice.
  3. Champion GOSH as a nurse-friendly organisation.
  4. Further develop extraordinary careers and leaders.

Our strategic priorities

We will continue to develop our skilled nursing workforce, creating more opportunities to innovate care and engage with research by:

  • Embracing innovation, technology and virtual reality in education and simulation.
  • Co-designing education with children and young people.
  • Delivering specialist paediatric education and training programmes to support nurses in their journey from foundation to consultancy.
  • Embedding our Research Hospital Strategy throughout nursing.

We will amplify the voice of the nursing profession, ensuring that nurses actively participate in decision-making by:

  • Facilitating a collaborative voice for all nurses through collective leadership.
  • Embedding a shared nursing governance model, creating a robust partnership between nurses and senior nurse leaders.
  • Creating opportunities for nurses to contribute to what matters for nursing.
  • Inspiring pride in the profession and recognition of the contribution of nursing.

We will ensure that GOSH is a ‘nurse friendly’ organisation through celebration, recognition, and respect of the nursing profession by:

  • Establishing a nursing council.
  • Designing a Trustwide GOSH nursing recognition scheme.
  • Capturing and sharing the impact of GOSH nursing on a local, regional, and international level.
  • Exploring the implementation of the IHI (Institute for Healthcare Improvement) Framework for Improving Joy at Work.

We will develop the leadership capabilities of our extraordinary nurses and enable them to lead extraordinary careers by:

  • Increasing access to nursing leadership and management development programmes.
  • Empowering nurses to lead in all areas and at all levels by promoting collective leadership.
  • Improving recruitment and retention of nurses, reflecting the diversity and ethnicities of our patients, families, and local population.
  • Establishing a pipeline of ‘home grown’ nurses with the expansion of our apprenticeship programme.

Bringing the strategy to life

In the first year of the strategy, we will set up a programme board to report into the newly formed Nursing Delivery Committee and drive delivery of the strategy.

The programme board will encompass working groups across the four strategic priorities, each led by a senior nursing leader at GOSH and with membership open to a wide range of nursing staff. The groups will work together to set annual SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely) objectives, mapping out how the strategy will be delivered over the next three years, and how we will know we’ve made a difference.

A women with red shoulder length hair smiling at the camera. She is wearing a black jacket and purple top.

Tracy Luckett, Chief Nurse

"GOSH is a world-leading hospital in the provision of children’s care, education, and research. As such, it gives me great pleasure to present the GOSH Nursing Strategy 2023 to 2026 Safe in our Hands, to achieve joy at work.

"It has never been more important to acknowledge the essential role of nursing in healthcare, and the uniqueness of skill, competency, knowledge, and altruism a nurse can provide, often during the most vulnerable time in a child’s life. With nurses at the heart of GOSH, and central to our reputation as an international centre of excellence in paediatric care, it is essential that we champion nurses’ interests, especially at a time of unprecedented challenge in the NHS and beyond. 

"Recent global healthcare challenges have changed how we deliver healthcare forever. We have an opportunity to work differently, through the evolution of digital technology, development of Artificial Intelligence in research and its application in the workplace, and the advent of new roles, both virtually and at the bedside. Such changes provide our nurses with a huge opportunity to help shape children’s nursing at GOSH and globally for years to come.

"Our strategy captures what matters most to our nurses, as well as our patients, and their parents or carers. We are so proud of our nurses and grateful for the care they provide to our patients and the work they do alongside colleagues across the Trust. I look forward to working with you all as we embark on this important journey to shape nursing at GOSH for decades to come."