The Spanish Alliance of Private Hospitals (ASPE) and the Spanish General Council of Nursing set out joint strategic priorities to strengthen and raise the profile of the role of nurses in private healthcare.
The General Council of Nursing and ASPE have held a meeting to work together on the professional and skills development of nurses working in private healthcare.
“The professional advancement and skills development of nurses must be reflected across our entire profession. We, who advocate for strengthening and raising the profile of the role nurses play today—with a very high level of training and increasingly broad and well-defined skills—believe that this should apply equally to nurses in both the public and private sectors,” says Florentino Pérez Raya, president of the CGE.
For Herminia Rodríguez, president of ASPE: “It is essential to align our efforts to strengthen the healthcare system as a whole, promoting new models that are more effective, sustainable and give greater prominence to nursing talent.”
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Madrid, 6 April 2026.—ASPE and the General Council of Nursing (CGE) have begun discussions to draw up new strategic guidelines for the support and development of nursing practice and its professionals in the private sector.
Representatives from both organisations held a meeting in which they outlined the joint lines of action to strengthen the role of nurses in private healthcare, as well as to raise the profile of the work carried out by these professionals, who are estimated to account for approximately 25% of all registered nurses currently working, according to the latest official data from the Ministry of Health.
“For the General Council of Nursing, it is very important to be available to all Spanish nurses, and this involves providing the same support and fighting for the rights of our professionals working in private institutions. With major projects such as private prescription, we at the CGE are convinced that the advancement of our profession depends on professionals from both the public and private healthcare systems working in unison,” explains Florentino Pérez Raya, president of the CGE.
It became clear during the meeting that the way forward is to establish synergies between the two institutions in order to work together to support nursing in the private sector. Accordingly, new strategies began to take shape during the meeting, aimed at promoting the role of nurses not only in private healthcare but also in other fields such as research and management. “Projects have been proposed to develop nurses’ skills in private healthcare, to foster leadership and shared lines of action, making use of the CGE’s National Centre for Leadership in the Nursing Profession, in order to focus on nurses in private healthcare and increase their prominence in both the clinical and management spheres,” says Diego Ayuso, General Secretary of the CGE.
Skills development in the private sector
“The professional advancement and skills development of nursing must be reflected across the entire profession. We, who advocate for strengthening and raising the profile of the role nurses play today – with a very high level of training and increasingly broad and well-defined skills – believe that this should apply equally to nurses working in both the public and private sectors,” emphasises the president representing more than 353,000 Spanish nurses.
For her part, Herminia Rodríguez, president of ASPE, believes that “working together allows us to align our efforts to strengthen the healthcare system as a whole, promoting more effective and sustainable models that address the consolidation of nursing-specific competencies and the development of the nursing team as a whole”.
Regarding the projects already underway to support the work of these nurses, in 2023 the CGE launched a pilot scheme enabling nurses working in the private sector to issue prescriptions, that is, dispensing orders. To do so, they can request prescription pads from the General Council (via the nursing associations) through a one-stop shop following an identification process by the body.
Currently, nurses in 17 Spanish provinces are able to issue prescriptions through this system, a development that improves the efficiency of care and enhances patient safety by helping to combat self-medication.
Article published by ASPE
