Duchess to become nurses’ champion
Three-year campaign aims to credit nurses for their role as ‘crucial’ experts in the fight against disease
The Duchess of Cambridge is to become a champion for nurses, launching a campaign to give them recognition as the “linchpins” of care. The Duchess, whose great-grandmother worked as a nurse during the First World War, aims to raise the “profile and status” of nurses, recognising them as experts who can tackle the “rising burdens” of disease. Later this month, she will speak at the launch of Nursing Now, a three-year global campaign to ensure nurses are credited as “crucial”.
THE Duchess of Cambridge is to become a champion for nurses, launching a campaign to give them recognition as the “linchpins” of care.
The Duchess, whose greatgrandmother worked as a nurse during the First World War, aims to raise the “profile and status” of nurses, recognising them as experts who can tackle the “rising burdens” of disease.
Later this month, she will make a major speech at the launch of Nursing Now, a three-year global campaign to ensure nurses are credited as “crucial”.
Olive Middleton, the Duchess’s great-grandmother, is known to have worked as a nurse, caring for wounded servicemen after the Leeds estate belonging to a cousin was turned into a field hospital. There, in Gledhow Hall, she is reported to have nursed men severely wounded on the Western front, learning the full horror of war. In 1920, she gave birth to Peter Middleton, the Duchess’s paternal grandfather.
Kensington Palace said the Duchess, who is pregnant with her third child, would join a round-table discussion with nurses from different countries and at different levels of seniority to “find out what it means to be a 21stcentury nurse”. She will then deliver a speech in praise of the nursing profession, emphasising the importance of nurses being listened to as leaders.
The day will also see her visit the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists for an event encompassing maternal and newborn mortality, contraception, and the “stigma around women’s health”. Observing workshops to teach trainee doctors skills in obstetrics and gynaecology, she will hear about work to reduce maternal and newborn death around the world and the Leading Safe Choices pro- gramme, which aims to “expand contraceptive choice” and “improve access to safe abortion services” in South Africa and Tanzania.
The combination of events appears to be a clear direction for the Duchess, aligning her more closely than ever with serious women’s issues. She has previously concentrated closely on maternal mental health and the wellbeing of children. Her interest in the Nursing Now campaign is understood to have been inspired by seeing the “vital” work of frontline medical staff in other areas of her campaign work, which has seen her visit numerous hospitals and medical conferences.
Her husband, the Duke, worked as a search and rescue pilot, regularly dealing with front-line medical staff, and previously speaking about the trauma of attending his first callout to a suicide.