This year's World Patient Safety Day theme, Safe care for noncommunicable diseases, shines a spotlight on the care of people living with long-term conditions - conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, respiratory disease and cancer, and account for the majority of deaths worldwide. 

Caring safely for people with noncommunicable diseases isn't about a single episode of care or a single intervention.  It's about getting things right consistently, over years and decades, across multiple services and settings. Nurses are at the heart of this effort, supporting people to navigate and manage their health throughout every stage of their care journey.    

In this blog, Kim Ball, Jane Ball and Rose Gallagher share what this year's theme means to nursing from their perspective, through the lens of prevention, safe staffing, and sustainability. 

Prevention is safety

Kim Ball, Professional Lead, Primary Care 

When we think about patient safety, it is easy to focus on incidents, errors and the systems put in place to prevent harm. Whilst these are undoubtedly important, patient safety starts much earlier than that. It starts with prevention, early intervention and ensuring people have access to the right care, at the right time, in the right place. 

General practice nursing has a vital role to play in this agenda. Every day, general practice nurses support people to make positive changes to their health, identify risks earlier and manage long-term conditions effectively. Whether it is delivering vaccinations, carrying out health checks, supporting smoking cessation, managing hypertension or helping someone understand their medication, these interactions all contribute to better outcomes and safer care. 

Many of the most significant interventions we make are often the ones that go unnoticed. A blood pressure check that prevents a stroke. A conversation about weight management that reduces the risk of developing diabetes. A medication review that identifies a potential problem before it causes harm. These are the moments where prevention and patient safety come together. 

General practice is uniquely placed to support people across the whole lifespan, from a diverse range of backgrounds. We often build long-term relationships with individuals and families, giving us opportunities to identify changes, have preventative conversations, and support people to manage their health more confidently.  

Ensuring there are enough nurses in general practice is essential because their expertise and long-term relationships with patients are key to achieving better health outcomes and patient experience.  

Safety depends on safe nurse staffing 

Jane Ball, Director of the RCN Institute of Nursing Excellence 

Safe care for people living with long-term conditions doesn't happen by chance. It depends on people having access to registered nurses at every stage of their care journey.  Nurses are the core ingredient for coordinating care so that a person’s needs are all met. We continue to call for mandated minimum registered nurse-to-patient ratios. A minimum is exactly that - a failsafe that should always be exceeded where patient need requires it, never a target to aim for. The evidence is consistent: patients are less likely to die from avoidable causes, or experience complications, when there are enough registered nurses on duty. 

We've also published a new resource bringing together current guidance on safe registered nurse-to-patient ratios across a range of settings, so members have the evidence they need to have conversations about minimum staffing levels in their own workplace. Safe staffing isn't a cost to be managed down. It's what makes safe, preventative care for people with long-term conditions possible - and it's why we won't stop making the case for it. 

Sustainability and safety go hand in hand

Rose Gallagher, Professional Lead, Sustainability 

Tackling the climate crisis means thinking critically and challenging how we've always done things. At the same time, patient safety has to stay at the centre of everything we do. So how do we hold both at once - how do we learn to act differently, without losing sight of safety? 

Patient safety and the health of our planet aren't competing priorities. They're closely connected: action on one helps the other, while easing pressure on overstretched health systems. Without health, there is no sustainable future. And without a resilient health service, patient safety is put at risk - as the burden of conditions like cardiovascular disease, obesity, heat stress and mental ill health continues to grow. 

The first step is recognising the tension between the pace of change needed, and the level of evidence we'd normally wait for before acting. That tension shouldn't delay progress. As nurses, we need more than permission to think and practise differently — we need leaders, employers and regulators to back us in doing so safely, with clear oversight and space to learn from each other. 

Sustainability isn't a project to be squeezed into staff's own time. It's something individuals and organisations need to build in - cutting duplication, challenging delay, and adopting safe change that protects patients today and services tomorrow. 

Bringing it together 

Prevention, staffing, sustainability - three different lenses on the same question: what does it take to keep people safe? They aren't separate agendas competing for space. They're facets of what it takes to deliver safe, person-centred care for people living with long-term conditions, today and for the long term. 

As we mark World Patient Safety Day, it's worth reflecting on what safety really requires: a nursing workforce with the time and capacity to deliver preventative care, and a system built to sustain that care into the future. Reducing the burden of noncommunicable disease is a challenge for society as a whole, not just for health care. But nursing - across every setting - is central to meeting it. 

Explore more resources to mark World Patient Safety Day 2026 

Read more on our work around safe staffing, and get involved 

Explore our resources on sustainability in health and care