21st Century. It draws upon a major consultation exercise with the professions and other key stakeholders and a number of commissioned projects

The Strategic Goal is quite simply stated:

to realise the full potential of nursing, midwifery and health visiting in order to meet, in collaboration with others, the future health needs of people in Wales

To achieve this ambitious goal, progress is needed towards five Supporting Aims:

1. Improving the environment of care

To ensure that nurses, midwives and health visitors co-ordinate the environment of care for their  patients and clients, thereby ensuring, through collaboration with others, that all appropriate resources are centred on the patient/client.

2. Ensuring high quality service for all

To ensure that high quality nursing, midwifery and health visiting care reaches all those in need  whether rich or poor, wherever they may be, to promote good health, and to prevent, cure or relieve suffering, with the client/patient as an  equal partner in care.

3. Encouraging independent and reflective practice

To ensure that all nurses, midwives and health  visitors develop their practice in a reflective and evidence-based manner, founded upon a standard  of education which enables them to practice as equal partners with other healthcare professionals, supported by continuing professional development and clinical supervision.

4. Developing existing and new career paths

To develop existing and new career paths for  nurses, midwives and health visitors which allow senior staff to remain clinically involved if they so wish, and which breakdown unhelpful barriers between education, research and practice, as well as, between nursing, midwifery and health visiting and the wider health care context.

5. Demonstrating the value of nurses, midwives and health visitors

To demonstrate the value of nursing, midwifery  and health visiting so that the professions  themselves, together with their colleagues and the service as a whole, appreciate the particular contribution which these professions make to the health of patients and clients.

All of this requires the co-ordinated effort of the thousands of nurses, midwives, health visitors involved in meeting health needs in Wales, together with all the other healthcare professions and support staff, and the organisations in which they work and support them. This Strategic Framework is relevant to every nurse, midwife and health visitor, to the leaders of other professions at national and local levels, and especially to all those charged with the responsibility for setting policy and managing health services and professional education in Wales.

It begins by outlining the key characteristics of nursing, midwifery and health visiting in the future (A Glimpse into the Future) - a pattern of services which will deliver the strategic goal set out above. Defined in the context of changing healthcare. The Framework goes on to describe the Strategic Goal for the professions together with five Supporting Aims, critical to the achievement of the Strategic Goal. The final section - The Way Forward - sets out specific action points against the five supporting aims, and describes of how progress will be monitored and reported.

This Strategic Framework provides a clear vision of the potential of nursing, midwifery and health visiting to contribute to the improvement of the health of the people of Wales in the future, and charts the necessary steps towards realising this potential.