Nursing Now will run to the end of 2020 – the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth and a year when nurses will be celebrated worldwide. We aim to improve perceptions of nurses, enhance their influence and maximise their contributions to ensuring that everyone everywhere has access to health and healthcare.

There are many organisations worldwide playing powerful roles in developing nursing and midwifery. Our aim is to complement and support them – bringing nursing to the forefront of thinking on global health and enabling nurses to do even more in improving health globally.

Our focus is on nursing but it also includes midwifery where the two professions overlap – and many nurses are also midwives. We recognise that midwives face the same pressures as nurses and that their extraordinarily valuable role needs to be strengthened and supported if Universal Health Coverage (UHC) is to become a reality.

By the end of 2020, we want to see the following goals achieved:

1. Greater investment in improving education, professional development, standards, regulation and employment conditions for nurses.

• All countries have plans for developing nursing and midwifery;
• Increased investment in all aspects of nursing and midwifery; and
• More nurses in training and employment, with clear progress in eliminating the global shortfall of 9 million nurses and midwives by 2030.

2. Increased and improved dissemination of effective and innovative practice in nursing.

• Nursing organisations collectively support a coordinated global portal of effective practice and innovation used by nurses and policy makers around the world.

3. Greater influence for nurses and midwives on global and national health policy, as part of broader efforts to ensure health workforces are more involved in decision-making.

• All global and national policies on health and healthcare acknowledge the role of nursing in achieving their goals and include plans for the development of nursing; and
• All national plans for delivering UHC make specific proposals to enhance and develop the role of nurses as the health professionals closest to the community.

4. More nurses in leadership positions and more opportunities for development at all levels.

• At least 75% of countries have a Chief Nursing Officer or Chief Government Nurse as part of their most senior management team in health;
• More senior leadership programmes for nurses; and
• The establishment of a global nursing leadership network.

5. More evidence for policy and decision makers about: where nursing can have the greatest impact, what is stopping nurses from reaching their full potential and how to address these obstacles.

• A landmark study on the economic impact of nursing is published;
• More articles on nursing’s impact in peer-reviewed A* journals; and
• A coordinated global network on research on nursing is established.