We would like to wish our Director of Fitness to Practise, Colm O’Leary, well as he leaves NMBI after four years.  

Colm has worked in professional regulation for over 18 years. He was responsible for the establishment of the Register of Teachers in 2006 and previously served as Director of Registration in CORU, the health and social care professionals regulator.  

Colm joined us as Director of Registration in 2019 and played a pivotal role in the implementation of our digitisation agenda and in the launch of our new registration system, MyNMBI.   

Since November 2020, he has overseen the Fitness to Practise Department and has ensured all complaints made about nurses and midwives are handled fully, fairly and transparently in accordance with the legislation which gives us our regulatory powers. 

He has used the breadth of his experience to improve all aspects of fitness to practise. He rolled out remote and hybrid inquiries during Covid-19 and has implemented all the newly amended provisions of the Nurses and Midwives Act 2011 relating to fitness to practise. 

The Board of NMBI wished Colm well at their meeting last week and acknowledged his lasting contribution to the organisation and the significant change he implemented during his time on our senior management team.  

All of his colleagues at NMBI would like to thank him for his support and guidance and we wish him every success in the future. 

March has been a busy month for our organisation, across all areas of our remit, as the first quarter of the year comes to an end.

Firstly, I would like to congratulate our new Vice President, Áine Lynch, who was elected to the role at our recent Board meeting on 22 March. She has a wealth of experience and I wish her well in the role.

I also want to pay tribute to our Director of Fitness to Practise, Colm O’Leary who leaves the organisation at the end of this month to take up a new role. Under his leadership, the department made great advancements, particularly during the pandemic when we were able to progress with fitness to practise hearings using new platforms to facilitate both in-person and hybrid format inquiries. He also previously held the position of Director of Registration and played a key role in the roll out of the online registration system, MyNMBI.

I would like to thank him for his enthusiasm and dedication over the past four years. He has truly made a positive impact on the organisation and I wish him the very best in his new endeavours.

As you will read in this issue, the annual registration renewal process for 2023 has been finalised and I would like to thank all our registrants who completed the process. Based on the information you have provided, we will begin to develop our next State of the Register report. The data we collate from the renewal process will help policy-makers to make informed decisions to better support the professions and the public. Over the past month alone, we have presented our data to our colleagues at LauraLynn and Cork University Hospital. The feedback we have received shows how important this data is and we look forward to publishing the second edition later in the year.

We were also delighted to meet with Indian Ambassador to Ireland, Akhilesh Mishra, last month. We are conscious of the need for more registered nurses and midwives in the Irish healthcare system and we will continue our work to assist overseas applicants who wish to join the NMBI Register. 

Following the publication of our first site inspection reports last year, I’m pleased to present the monitoring update reports for Dundalk Institute of Technology, Munster Technological University and University of Galway in this issue. As part of our role as regulator, we review education bodies that deliver nursing and midwifery education programmes and the clinical placement sites to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the curriculum structures, processes and outcomes. I’d like to thank the site inspection teams and the education bodies for their engagement in this process. The high standards of nursing and midwifery education they demonstrated is clearly reflected in the reports.

I would also like to remind our readers to share their views by taking part in a public consultation on the Draft Digital Health Competency Standards and Requirements for Undergraduate Nursing and Midwifery Education Programmes. The draft standards aim to ensure nurses and midwives are confident in accessing and managing quality-assured digital health systems and solutions when they graduate. Your feedback is important to us and will help to inform future undergraduate nursing and midwifery education programmes. The consultation closes at 5pm on Tuesday, 11 April.

In this issue, we also include an update on mature applicant entry into undergraduate nursing and midwifery education programmes, as well as information on the revalidation of adaptation and assessment sites.

Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all our registered nurses and midwives for their work and for the positive impact they continue to make to the Irish healthcare system. We look forward to working closely with you in the coming months.

We are delighted to announce that Áine Lynch has been elected as Vice President of the NMBI Board.

Áine was first elected to the Board in January 2021 as a representative of the Health Service Executive (Director of Nursing or Director of Midwifery). She also serves on the Preliminary Proceedings Committee and the Audit and Risk Committee.

Áine is a registered general nurse and is currently Interim Chief Director of Nursing and Midwifery at Dublin Midlands Hospital Group.

She has a long and distinguished career in the health service, having worked predominantly in the acute hospital setting in Dublin, following a number of years practising in the UK and Saudi Arabia. Prior to her current role, she was the Director of Nursing and Integrated Care at Tallaght University Hospital (TUH). She worked in a number of roles in TUH including ward manager, Clinical Facilitator, Nurse Practice Development Advisor and Coordinator. She also had an opportunity to work as Project Officer and Interim Director at the Nursing and Midwifery Planning and Development Unit at Dublin, Kildare and Wicklow, HSE.

Áine’s appointment follows the announcement that Dr Louise Kavanagh McBride was elected as NMBI’s President in January. They will both lead the Board in overseeing the organisation as it works to implement its new Statement of Strategy 2023-2025. 

At its meeting on Wednesday, 22 March, our Board confirmed the names of those who are removed from the Register of Nurses and Midwives for failure to pay the annual renewal fee.

The Board considers removals under Section 77 of the Nurses and Midwives Act 2011, as amended.

Removal notices are being issued from 22 March to those who did not renew their registration for 2023.

Notifications of removals will be sent to the Minister for Health, the Health Service Executive and other known employers under Section 82 of the Act.

All nurses and midwives who practise in Ireland must, by law, be listed on the Register of Nurses and Midwives. It is an offence to practise nursing or midwifery if your name is not on the Register. Practice includes clinical practice, nursing or midwifery management, education, and research.

It is the registrants’ legal and professional responsibility to ensure that their name is on the Register if they practise nursing or midwifery in Ireland.

Registrants wishing to restore their name to the Register for 2023 are required to pay a restoration fee of €250 in addition to the annual renewal fee of €100. They must also comply with the restoration requirements at the time of application.

Those who wish to voluntarily remove their name from the Register can do so on MyNMBI. This service is free of charge.

Picture (L to R): Dr Ray Healy, Director of Registration, NMBI; Kathyann Barrett, Head of Operations, NMBI; Sheila McClelland, NMBI CEO; Akhilesh Mishra, Indian Ambassador to Ireland and Dawn Johnston, Director of Midwifery, NMBI

We were delighted to welcome the Indian Ambassador to Ireland, His Excellency, Akhilesh Mishra, to our office last month.

HE Mishra met with our CEO, Sheila McClelland, and other members of our senior management team to discuss the contribution Indian nurses and midwives make to the Irish health services.

Speaking of the visit, Sheila said: “As a regulator, engaging with our stakeholders and registrants is an important aspect of our work so that we can improve and evolve with the changing healthcare environment. Having the opportunity to meet with the Ambassador allows us to ensure we continue to help applicants join our Register.

We value the contribution Indian nurses and midwives make to the provision of healthcare in this country and meeting the Ambassador is a great opportunity for us to express our appreciation and further support our applicants and registrants”.

During the meeting, our Director of Registration, Dr Ray Healy, provided HE Mishra with an update on the registration process for overseas applicants.  

Dr Healy said: “This is the second year we have met with the Ambassador and we were delighted to discuss the advances we have made to assist Indian nurses and midwives wishing to come onto the NMBI Register. Last year we published our State of the Register 2022 and from the data we can see that 2,364 Indian qualified nurses and midwives joined our Register for the first time between 1 June 2021 to 31 May 2022”.

We have published site inspection monitoring reports for Dundalk Institute of Technology, Munster Technological University and National University of Ireland, Galway. 

The reports provide a monitoring update of the site inspections conducted by NMBI last year. The update reports are based on information provided by each education body in collaboration with their practice partners.

As part of our role as a regulator, we assess and approve all undergraduate programmes leading to registration in nursing and midwifery. To ensure these education programmes are of a high standard, we conduct site inspections of university and college departments as well as their partner placement sites. These reports provide an in-depth look at each education programme and include a summary of the commendations, conditions and recommendations for best practice in professional education.

We would like to thank each education body and their associated healthcare providers for their collaboration and engagement with the process.

The reports are now available to read on our website.

Share your views in our public consultation on the Draft Digital Health Competency Standards and Requirements for Undergraduate Nursing and Midwifery Education Programmes before it closes on Tuesday, 11 April.

The draft document aims to ensure that digital health is incorporated into education programmes which lead to registration to ensure nurses and midwives learn about digital tools as part of their education. The draft standards aim to align with national and international evidence-based practice in a changing digital health environment.

Digital health is a key priority to support the redesign of services required under the Sláintecare model of care. We would like to capture your experience and opinion of the draft standards and requirements for the digital health competencies for undergraduate education programmes.

This survey is completely anonymous. Your contribution to the consultation process is important and we would appreciate you feedback.

You can view the Draft Digital Health Competency Standards and Requirements and complete the survey on our website.

We would like to remind sites providing adaptation and assessment programmes and aptitude tests to complete their revalidation application forms if they have not yet done so.

As part of a new process, we are reviewing adaptation and assessment sites for revalidation.

Adaptation and assessments are clinically-based practice programmes that can be undertaken by overseas nurses and midwives as a compensation measure which can lead to registration in Ireland.

As we are seeing an increase in overseas applications, we want to ensure adaptation sites are prepared to support nurses and midwives in demonstrating their competency for registration.

Following a review of the current process for approval of compensation measures, we are revalidating current adaptation sites to ensure that providers meet the standards and requirements as set out in the Compensation Measures for Nurses Trained Outside of Ireland (2019) and Competence Assessment Tool for Midwives (2015). The approval for these sites will be granted for a five-year period.  

Since the introduction of the new process last year, we have revalidated 33 sites and validated seven new sites.

For sites that have yet to complete their revalidation, application forms to provide adaptation and assessment programmes and aptitude tests are available on our website.

If you would like more information, you can also contact our Education Department at Educationandguidance@nmbi.ie.

We would like to advise all mature applicants applying for undergraduate nursing and midwifery programmes that full information is now available on our website.  

To be considered for the programmes, mature applicants must be 23 years of age or over by 1 January 2023, have a valid Central Applications Office (CAO) application number and successfully complete three assessment tests.

Registration is now open and applicants are required to complete the registration form to sit the tests any time between 1pm on Friday, 31 March and 1pm on Monday, 24 April 2023. 

Those who have not registered will not be eligible to sit the tests and we strongly recommend that applicants register as soon as possible. 

The assessment tests will be completed online between 1pm on Wednesday, 3 May and 1pm on Wednesday, 10 May 2023.

Information on the tests is available in the familiarisation booklet which is available on our website.The booklet provides guidance on the assessment testing process and the tests used to ensure that applicants are comfortable with the testing format. We recommend that all applicants read this booklet in full before registering and completing the assessment tests. 

For queries relating to the online assessment tests, you can contact NMBI by email at careersinformation@nmbi.ie. 

Further updates will be made available on the Mature Applicants page of our website. 

Pictured (L to R): Susan Jacobs CNM2, CUH; Sheila McClelland, NMBI CEO; Sinéad Favier, Paediatric CPC, NPDU, CUH; Helen Cahalane, Director of Nursing CUH and Annmarie Galvin, ADON/NPDC, General NPDU, CUH

Last month, our CEO, Sheila McClelland, presented at Cork University Hospital’s (CUH) Annual Nursing Conference.

The theme of this year’s conference was A Turning Tide: Nurses Influencing the Future with the aim of providing a platform for consideration, information and celebration of nurses and their work influencing the future.

In her presentation, Sheila spoke about how regulation supports registrants in a changing health landscape. She addressed the changing healthcare policy environment and how we work collaboratively with our stakeholders to ensure the safety of service users and the public.

Among the keynote speakers were, Geraldine Cunningham, Organisational Development Consultant at Barts NHS Trust London, Dr Jolanta Burke, Associate Professor at the RCSI and former Olympian, World champion and bestselling author, Derval O’Rourke. The event also heard from the Head of Nursing at CUH, Helen Cahalane, who opened the conference.

Pictured (L to R): Dr Ray Healy, Director of Registration, NMBI; Karina O Sullivan, NMPDU; Anne Marie Carroll, Laura Lynn; Marie Kilduff, OMNSD and Helen Corrigan, Department of Health.

Our Director of Registration, Dr Ray Healy, was invited to speak at LauraLynn’s Nursing Leadership Event last month.

LauraLynn is a charity which provides services and supports to children with palliative care needs.

The event was held to provide LauraLynn’s Nursing Leadership and Management Team with a better understanding of the political landscape of nursing in Ireland and to identify the opportunities available for professional development.

Ray spoke about the purpose of professional regulation in Ireland and how we effectively regulate as an organisation through our Registration, Education, Standards and Guidance and Fitness to Practise functions. Ray also presented data on the number of nurses and midwives on our Register with a particular focus on the Children’s Division.

Other speakers at the event included Anne-Marie Carroll, Director of Nursing; the Department of Health’s Chief Nursing Office’s Project Officer Helen Corrigan; the Director of the National Clinical Leadership Centre for Nursing and Midwifery, Marie Kilduff; and Nursing and Midwifery Planning and Development Unit Project Officer Karina O’Sullivan.