Northern Ireland's health system cannot expect its staff to "step up time and time again" to provide patient care and ensure their safety.
That is according to the head of Northern Ireland's Confederation for Health and Social Care, which is marking the NHS's 75th anniversary.
A long-term funding plan, political leadership and transformation are all overdue, Michael Bloomfield said.
"There is a clear vision for what needs to happen, the leaders across the health and social care system know what needs to happen - we just need political leadership to make sure it happens," he told BBC News NI.
Amid all the celebrations, there are mixed feelings about the current condition and future of health and social care.
The director of the Royal College of Nursing NI, Rita Devlin, described the idea of not having an NHS as "unthinkable".
"We need to make sure that the environment that we are asking our nurses to work in is one that values the work that they do and fairly pays and rewards them for what they do," she said.
Other issues that need addressing, she added, were career pathways, training and ensuring that "when a nurse wants to stay at the bedside, that that is valued equally as the nurses who want to go into management".
Source: BBC News, 5 July 2023
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