The views collected will explore how an element of the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 – aiming to ensure that clinical leaders in the NHS, including SCNs, have protected time to lead – is being implemented in practice.
SCNs play a vital role in the delivery of safe and effective care. Given their duties as clinical and professional leaders for nursing staff delivering direct care, we believe that SCNs should be non-caseload holding and fully supernumerary. This is to enable them to lead effectively, act as role models and mentors, develop clinical competencies and leadership skills in the team, and support colleagues with their learning and development.
While the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 stops short of mandating that SCNs should be fully supernumerary, it sets out to ensure that all clinical leaders within the NHS have protected time to lead. Yet we know that SCNs are not always getting this protected time, with many also required to provide direct patient care during their shifts due to workforce challenges, lack of time and clinical pressures.
We are keen to understand if and how the legal right to protected time to lead is implemented in practice for SCNs. SCNs not having sufficient time to lead points to the larger nursing staff crisis in the NHS, including longstanding issues with staffing levels and effective allocation of staff. We have consistently raised concerns about these issues, with one of our 2026 election priorities being centred on safe and effective care.
Through our Senior Charge Nurse Survey, we are asking SCNs about their experience of being supernumerary or supervisory, and any barriers or challenges to this that have an impact on them and their leadership roles.
Survey responses will inform our policy positions and help raise awareness of the challenges faced by senior charge nurses, as well as to help us lobby for better and safer working conditions.
Eileen McKenna, Associate Director, Nursing, Policy and Professional Practice said: “The Senior Charge Nurse role is vital the safe and effective delivery of care across Scotland’s hospital wards. They are the clinical experts and should have oversight of all the patients and staff on their ward. Being counted in the numbers providing direct patient care limits their ability to maintain that oversight, to support and supervise staff and to provide the clinical leadership that is central to their role. Through this survey we want to understand how many of Scotland’s SCNs get the time they need to do their job to the best of their ability.”
The survey is open to senior charge nurses working in the NHS in Scotland, who are members of the RCN.
