Blog: NMC Council recruitment for Scotland and new associate roles

The strength of our Council comes from the different voices around our table – our combined experience, expertise and skills help us to make the right collective decisions for you, the 700,000 plus nurses, midwives and nursing associates we regulate, and the UK population we serve.

If you relish the prospect of helping shape the work of your regulator, this may be your chance to join us. I am pleased to tell you that we are now looking for one new Council member who lives or works wholly or mainly in Scotland and who can bring midwifery expertise to our work. We are also launching an innovative new scheme to appoint two new Associates.

Our role, as the NMC’s governing Council, is to set the strategic direction and then hold the executive team to account for delivery. We’re made up of six nurses, midwives or nursing associates and six lay members.

As a Council, we work collaboratively with the Executive to fulfil our common purpose: to promote and uphold high professional standards in nursing and midwifery, protect the public and inspire public confidence. All of us around the table contribute towards realising our common vision of: safe, effective and kind nursing and midwifery practice, and improving everyone’s health and wellbeing. And everything we do is founded in our shared values of being fair, kind, collaborative and ambitious.

As Chair of the Council, I am determined that our Council should better reflect the diversity of the professions we regulate, and the public we all serve. So we are particularly keen to hear from black, Asian and minority ethnic registrant colleagues for these roles.

Council member – Scotland

We are working with midwifery leaders, including the Royal College of Midwives, to recruit a member who lives or works wholly and mainly in Scotland with midwifery expertise. This will help to ensure that the midwifery perspective is always heard at the highest levels of the NMC.

Lorna Tinsley, who brings current midwifery expertise, will leave us at the end of September; you can read about Lorna’s account of being a Council member here.

The new member will replace Rob Parry, who has been our member for Scotland for the last 6 years. You can read a blog about Rob’s experience on the Council and why he joined here.

Earlier this year we successfully appointed four high quality dedicated individuals, two lay and two registrant members who will help us deliver our ambitious vision. But an ongoing challenge in our selection processes is finding new colleagues with the requisite exposure to strategic decision making and board-level experience and with midwifery expertise or from BAME backgrounds. We want to address this by giving talented individuals from different backgrounds the opportunity to develop those board level skills and expertise through our two new associate roles.

Associate scheme

The two new associates will be able to contribute to our discussions and participate in our activities alongside Council members. I’m confident the experience gained working with our Council will help equip them to play influential and positive roles in the health and social care sectors now and in the years to come, whether that next step is with the NMC or elsewhere.

This is an exciting prospect for me, as Chair of the Council, to have the opportunity to work with and develop talent, supporting the next generation of potential Council/non-executive board members. And I hope the idea of working with a team dedicated to such an ambitious vision is equally exciting for our prospective candidates.

If you’re interested in joining us, you can find out more about what to expect and how to apply by reading the candidate briefings for the Scotland role or the Associate role, and if you’ve any questions we’re very happy to help.

Other recent news…