Change and Continuity

I am writing this blog as the incoming Chief Executive at the QICN. I come into post on the 1st of July 2025 and I am very excited, but also a little bit apprehensive, as I am following the amazing Crystal, who I am incredibly grateful to for supporting me during this transition period. 

I have been a Queen’s Nurse since 2018 and was honoured to be awarded Fellowship of the QICN in 2019. I have been working with the QICN since January 2024, initially in a voluntary capacity to support the development and launch of Organisational Membership.  

I moved into my current role as Deputy Chief Executive and DON in October 2024. Prior to this I spent six years at Leeds Community Healthcare as the Chief Nurse. I am a very proud District Nurse and have always maintained my clinical practice and will continue to ensure I regularly shadow nurses working in the community. I also chaired the Trailblazer group for the successful development of the District Nurse Apprenticeship, which has now been broadened to include other areas of community nursing specialisms. 

I will be starting in the Chief Executive role at a very exciting time for community nursing, with the three shifts described by the Government in the soon to be published 10-year plan. It feels like this is a real opportunity for community nursing across all the different areas of practice to really influence neighbourhood working, ensuring people receive high quality care in the community. 

Primary Care 

We have had some feedback on our new name and, overall, this has been positive as people feel it better describes what we do and who we support. However, we have had some feedback from colleagues working in primary care that the new title doesn’t feel inclusive of primary care and specifically General Practice Nursing. I wanted to assure our General Practice Nurse colleagues that when we use the term ‘community’, we absolutely include primary care in this. It isn’t possible for the name of the organisation to capture every speciality within community nursing and therefore community is used as an overarching principle to include all nursing practice that is delivered outside of a general hospital setting. I hope this helps to explain and I am excited to work alongside all community nursing specialities in my new role. 

I will be spending time getting out and about during my first weeks and months in the job, to visit as many different providers as possible of nursing care in the community. This will include Care Homes, General Practice, District Nursing Teams, Health Visitors, School Nurses, Hospices, Homeless and Health Inclusion teams, Community Children’s Nursing Teams, etc.  

Policy Influence 

I want to ensure that the QICN continues to influence policy development at this critical time for community and the NHS. We know that things are tough now, and we are here to support and listen to you. We will continue to push the message that if we are to achieve the shift of more care into the community the resources must be available to achieve this! We will also continue to work in partnership with our sister organisation QNI Scotland, who will not be changing their name. 

I am delighted and honoured that in my first two days in post I will be visiting a care home which has recently become a QICN organisational member, to meet staff and discuss the role of the QICN.  I will be doing this visit in partnership with Deb Sturdy Chief Nurse for Adult Social Care Nursing. On my second day in post, I have been invited to Scotland to meet the QICN patron Her Majesty Queen Camilla by our sister organisation QNI Scotland, of whom she is also patron. This is an amazing honour, and I am really looking forward to it.  

We are currently starting to plan this year’s annual conference which will be over three days online in October 2025. We are also discussing having the 2026 conference in person – more news on this in the coming weeks and months as we work through the logistics. 

I look forward to talking to you all in the coming weeks and months and welcoming more new Queen’s Nurses later in the year. In the meantime, please do not hesitate to contact me of I can be of any assistance, my email is Steph.lawrence@qicn.org.uk.