Lynn WoolseyUnion

Biography

Lynn Woolsey is the Chief Nursing Officer of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), appointed permanently to the role in April 2025 after acting in it since September 2024. She provides strategic leadership on nursing workforce, practice and regulation across all four countries of the UK, representing the RCN's 570,000-plus members and working with regulators, governments and senior stakeholder groups. Before joining the RCN as UK Deputy Chief Nurse in September 2023, she served as Deputy Chief Nursing Officer in the Department of Health Northern Ireland and spent a decade at Southern Health and Social Care Trust in assistant director roles. She has consistently argued that NHS workforce planning must be based on patient need rather than available budgets, and has called for sustained investment in social care as a condition for NHS modernisation. She has also raised concern about outdated public perceptions of nursing deterring young people from entering the profession.

References

1. 1.'Workforce planning must be based on patient need, not budgets', says new RCN Chief Nursing Officer | Royal College of Nursing — Confirms permanent appointment as CNO in April 2025, her stated priorities, and background including previous role as Deputy CNO in the Department of Health Northern Ireland
2. 2.RCN appoints substantive chief nursing officer | Nursing Times — Independent confirmation of appointment, acting period since September 2024, prior role as RCN Deputy Chief Nurse from September 2023, and decade at Southern Health and Social Care Trust
3. 3.Meet your Congress speakers | Royal College of Nursing — Confirms current title as UK Chief Nursing Officer, scope of role across all four UK countries, and prior RCN Deputy CNO and Department of Health Northern Ireland roles
4. 4.Executive Team | Royal College of Nursing — Official RCN executive team page confirming her role, responsibilities, and detailed career history including assistant director roles in Northern Ireland

Expertise

Cited on

• Hospital discharge / bed-blocking
• Adult social care & reform

Stated areas of expertise

• Nursing workforce planning
• Nursing practice and regulation
• Social care investment
• Nurse education and recruitment
• Patient safety
• NHS reform

Notable achievements

• Appointed substantive (permanent) Chief Nursing Officer of the RCN in April 2025, having acted in the role since September 2024 following Nicola Ranger's appointment as General Secretary and Chief Executive. Source ↗
• Previously served as Deputy Chief Nursing Officer in the Department of Health Northern Ireland, and as Assistant Director of Nursing and Midwifery for Workforce and Education, with responsibility for the nursing workforce across acute and primary care settings. Source ↗
• Led RCN advocacy on the nursing graduate employment crisis, raising the issue at the highest levels with NHS England Chief Nurses and securing webinars and resources for newly registered members struggling to find permanent roles. Source ↗

What they’ve said

• “The NMC must ensure all those practising as registered nurses are safe to do so at the point of registration and throughout their careers. It is a potentially dangerous regulatory failing that individuals made appropriate declarations regarding criminal convictions and/or health conditions over such a long period of time without appropriate checks to determine their fitness to practise.”

  Chief Nursing Officer, Royal College of Nursing · Hospital discharge / bed-blocking · 27 Aug 2026 · UK nurses and midwives who should have been banned have worked for last 12 years ↗

• “The learning-disability nurse workforce is in absolute crisis, with workforce numbers falling while university student numbers also collapse. Their skills are too vital for this to be allowed to continue.”

  Chief Officer, Royal College of Nursing · Hospital discharge / bed-blocking · 27 Aug 2026 · Lack of learning-disability nurses in UK is an ‘absolute crisis’, says union ↗

• “There are also warnings to heed, with growing concerns about overstated, overly optimistic assessments of the productivity benefits from AI.”

  Chief nursing officer at the Royal College of Nursing · Hospital discharge / bed-blocking · 27 Aug 2026 · NHS to use AI on its app to direct patients to appropriate services ↗

• “At the current rate, the numbers of domestic nurses joining will nowhere near make up for the collapse in overseas nursing staff coming to the UK.”

Source references

1. UK nurses and midwives who should have been banned have worked for last 12 yearstheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
2. Lack of learning-disability nurses in UK is an ‘absolute crisis’, says uniontheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
3. NHS to use AI on its app to direct patients to appropriate servicestheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026
4. Drop in overseas workers is ‘car crash’ for UK hospitals and care homes, say expertstheguardian.com · 27 Aug 2026

Contact & links

• Staff pagehttps://www.rcn.org.uk/About-us/Our-governance/How-we-work/Our-structure/RCN-Executive-Team
• LinkedInhttps://uk.linkedin.com/in/lynn-woolsey-b1151285
• Press office phone020 7409 3333published here ↗
• Websitehttps://www.rcn.org.uk/About-us/Press-office

Organisational contact points only, each taken from a page the organisation publishes itself. No personal or direct contact details are held or shown.