The year 2020 was established by the World Health Organization as The Year of the Nurse and Midwife to emphasize the importance of this profession to the healthcare system. Strange but true, nurses around the world celebrated it by being frontline workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Thus, the phrase “Nursing Now” has become more important than ever. The main aim of this article was to draw attention to the fact that 2020 was the Year of the Nurse and Midwife and, indeed, their role in the fight against the pandemic is difficult overlook. Through the use of available scientific databases, documents and scientific publications related to the subject were collected and analyzed. Nurses are able to fulfill their duties as long as they are properly rewarded and provided not only with support but also better terms and conditions of employment. The investment in nurses should also be treated as an investment in the healthcare system.

The development of medical science creates new challenges for nurses to acquire new skills. Thanks to legal changes in Poland, nurses have gained the opportunity to independently provide health services in many areas, including consultations for patients. The aim of the survey is to analyze nurses’ opinions on the expansion of competences in their profession. This is a cross-sectional, descriptive study conducted among 798 nurses using the survey technique. The majority (65.48%) of the respondents believed that they were adequately prepared to take up new competences. Most of the respondents believed that the new competence would improve the efficiency of the healthcare system in Poland (71.06%) and facilitate patients’ access to health services (65.29%). According to the nurses, the scope of nursing advice will mainly concern the promotion of health education, wound treatment and prescribing medications. Age, seniority and education level significantly influenced the nurses’ opinions on the scope of nursing advice. The Mann–Whitney test and the Kruskal–Wallis test were used. A correlation between two quantitative variables was assessed with the Spearman’s rho coefficient. The significance level of p < 0.05 was assumed. The extension of the professional competences of nurses will increase the prestige of the profession and is another step toward introducing the role of Advanced Practice Nurse in Poland.

Demographic changes such as the systematically growing number of older people and the decreasing number of births significantly influenced health policy and healthcare systems in various countries and also caused a significant demand for professional nursing care. The lack of medical staff – and in particular nursing – is a problem that many countries will have to face in the near future, including Poland. Staff shortages are one of the main factors determining the future health policy in the world. The forecasts of the Supreme Council of Nurses and Midwives regarding the situation of nurses in Poland show that in less than five years Poles can be deprived of professional nursing and midwifery care. According to the WHO, there are currently shortages of 7.2 million medical personnel in the world in relation to the reported needs, and according to the report of the Third General Human Resources Forum in Health Care, there will be a shortage of 12.9 million nurses in 2035. In this report, the WHO also warns that in the next 10 years nearly 40% of nurses will leave the profession. The reasons for shortage of nursing staff are multi-faceted and complex, requiring comprehensive solutions. Recommendations regarding nursing policy include the need to prepare and implement national social security programs in services provided by nurses, which would cover the issues of improving working conditions, employment and implementing mechanisms regulating remuneration.

In the past five years, nursing practice has changed drastically in Poland. Nurses have received many new competencies in response to the need to provide services to patients. The purpose of the study was to analyze nurses’ opinions on the new rights to provide nursing advice and to identify factors that influence their opinions in this regard. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among 798 nurses who work in various medical facilities. The influence of selected variables on nurses’ opinions on the provision of nursing advice to patients was evaluated using logistic regression. The nurses surveyed had a positive attitude towards new competencies and believed that they were able to independently provide the patient with advice within the scope provided by Polish legislation. Logistic regression showed that the factors that statistically significantly influenced nurses’ opinions on particular types of nursing advice were age (p = 0.038), education (p = 0.000), and the place of work of the respondents; that is, hospital (p = 0.016). More research is needed to demonstrate the effectiveness and quality of the implemented nursing advice and its impact on the functioning of the health system.

Constantly changing environment and constantly growing needs and requirements of patients, make nursing define its competences, look for place in the health care system, plan tasks and create nursing development strategies. It tries to meet the requirements, becoming at the same time a key link in the health care system and a fully autonomous profession but with an unchangeable mission which is to save human life and care for the patient. Permanent changes in health care, in society as well as in the structures in medical professions cause that nursing constantly strives for its development and tries to engage substantive dialogue with those responsible for health policy, in order to outline the framework of the profession in the actual reality and its future. A review of selected national strategies for nursing development, the circumstances in which they developed and key assumptions allow to conclude about their positive impact on public health in a given country and on the quality of patient care. What connects individual strategies is the priority treatment of multi-sectoral cooperation in health care, aspects related to the promotion of the profession, education of nurses and the definition of new roles and new competences in the context of the requirements and needs of a given country. An example may be prescribing, providing nursing advice or introducing the role of an advanced practice nurse. A great achievement for nursing in Poland is the initiative of creation “Strategy of Development for nursing”. It is a planning document that defines the directions of activities ensuring high quality, safety and access to nursing care of patients.