The 20 million nurses and midwives who globally make up half of the professional health workforce, yet they are too often not enabled, resourced and supported to use their education and expertise to their full potential. This is an enormous waste of talent and resources. The WISH report on nursing and universal healthcare (UHC) describes how strengthening nursing and midwifery as part of the wider health workforce will enable the rapid, high quality and cost-effective scaling up of UHC.