Goodbye NHS

[Madwife123]

Well Rishi and his party have finally managed to kill the NHS it seems.

From April 2023 a band 5 nurse will earn £3.42 an hour above the new minimum wage.

Out of that £3.42 they are paying student loans, NMC fee, work parking permit. Costs they would not have if they never went to uni and instead went straight into a minimum wage job.

Young people wanting to be nurses are now financially better off going to work in Tesco instead.

It’s frankly an insult to how hard they work and the responsibility they have to say there is no money for an NHS pay rise and then raise benefits and pension by 10%. Where is that money coming from? If you paid them fairly in the first place they wouldn’t be relying on top up benefits!

This is really going to help the staffing crisis! I expect nurses will be leaving in their masses come next year and the Tory’s will finally get what they always wanted.

It's shocking. I'm band 5 nhs and it's incomprehensible how bad conditions are.

Completely, 100% agree with everything you said. I'm not a nurse but mum currently in hospital and I see just how hard you work. You deserve to be paid a much higher wage. Thank you for all you do x

Yep 100% agree. I have two new band 5s in my team who are 60k in debt now due to their training. It's a brutal job and when you are not financial remunerated for it why would you stay?

Not begrudging the minimum wage rise but the gap now just isn't worth the 3 years of slog and a job at the end that most folk don't want to do anymore. Tories don't care though they'll blame nurses.

In an ideal world, a nursing degree would be like the police one.

3 year degree with no fees on full pay. My ds is doing the police degree apprenticeship and it’s fantastic. He will come out of it with a good career already in place, a degree and no student debt and having earned a good wage for the 3 years doing it.

Obviously, it isn’t an ideal world.

But I wish nursing was the same. Imagine how many more people would be able to become nurses.

well, this is exactly how nurse training used to be. I got paid to train, as well as having a room in the nurses home.

The biggest mistake the Tories made was taking away free tuition for nurses. I trained as a paediatric nurse under the last cohort of free tuition, as well as bursaries. Even with that help, it was still a big struggle so god knows what the incentive is for nurses to train is now. Highest drop out rate of any degree!

This is truly shocking. Nurses are essential, so shouldn't have to get into huge debt to get started.
Free paid training is needed.

This will be a newly qualified band five though ,because they will still get yearly increments i assume, plus unsocial hours and shift allowance?
There are other ways into becoming a registerrd nurse these days ,my friend did a two year nurse associate course and got paid minimum wage throughout ,shes just about too finish a top up course and will qualify as a registed nurse early next year ,no tuition fees ,for the first 12 monts she got something like £4/ hr ( i realise thats crap but better than notjing ) and the final six months i think she gets minimum wage

I'm in Scotland (so fees paid here) and qualified 4 years ago. I think we still get bursary here? I was lucky anyway as I decided to retrain in my 30s as a single mum before both know kids in school and I got top ups to my bursary. I'd never ever have done nursing had I come out with debt. I'm 4 years into my career now and it's hard, we are very very short staffed. I worked in Tesco on a Sunday during my training and admittedly I got a Tesco application form last week!!! I won't fill it in as I love being a nurse, my team and being with my patients but I do worry very much for the NHS. (I did do some time in private sector and it's no better staffed or paid tbh).

I was a band five for years ,i havent been a nurse for abour 8 years now ,but my wage then was still well above my dh who works for Tesco ,plus he doesnt get unsocial hours

Unfortunately no-one gets yearly increments anymore so will be on this wage for at least 2 years.

All AHPs and a lot of other qualified NHS staff are on agenda for change pay, they work mon-fri with no options of unsocial hours or overtime to supplement the basic pay. Its a sad situation all round.

The turnover of band 2/3/4 staff in my department (pathology) is shocking, it’s almost 80%. They all have degrees so they are leaving for better opportunities. Their jobs are really complex and fundamental - we cannot function without them. It takes years for them to be fully trained in all areas because they do such a variety of tasks.
It is absolute chaos trying to train all the replacements when even when they are all fully trained there isn’t enough of them.

But you could get a band 2 job in the NHS. Less responsibility, all the benefits and not a massive drop in pay.

My grandma was a nurse and while I miss her terribly I'm glad she's not alive to see this.

@Manekinek0 absolutely agree and a band 3 pay.

Wow! I didn't know this.
I'm no expert but couldn't it be argued as sex discrimination if most police officers are male and nurses are female?
Both jobs are essential for a functioning society and need 24 hours running so similar importance if not the exact same jobs.

I don't think many NMW jobs get the pension, holiday or sick pay NHS staff get. It's not quite the fair comparison.

Ridiculous nurses have to pay for their own training though. Although a poster up thread seemed to point out it was possible to qualify in a different way. The police degree way seems eminently sensible.

But as has been mentioned above band 2 NHS staff do. Cleaners, catering assistants, porters, domestics etc. They get all of those benefits.

@Manekinek0 fair point I didn't realise that!

My DP qualified 2 years ago (MH) and has already walked away from nursing. It’s hell.

Years ago I was a support worker on a mental health ward and things were awful - no staff available for required level 3/4 obs, no staff available for response to PET alarms on other wards. I used to stay well passed my hours because there was no one else to do the stuff that absolutely had to be done. Usually 5 patients on Level 3 obs and one nurse, 2 support workers on a night shift. Nurses crying because they realise that yet again they’ve been left on their own with a full ward. frustrated patients who just wanted someone to open their loo for them or supervise them for some fresh air. I frequently came in on my days off because they were so desperate for staff.

Management couldn’t have cared less. Police frequently visited the hospital when we were short staffed and frustration boiled over to a point where it was an unsafe environment.

I know I wasn’t a nurse, but it was a hard job and I was paid less than I was when I worked as a student in a supermarket. I have so much disgust in this government for what they’ve done to our NHS. I hope the nursing strikes get the right outcome.

I fear we’ll see a privatised mental health service in the next few years.

Trainee Nursing associates are AFC band 3's as standard. That's a net pay of £9.07. Not £4. I think your friend has been telling porkies if she's claiming to have been paid £4 an hour. But like student nurses they are often given responsibilities of a band 5 RGN as they are so short staffed.

Anecdotally, on ds course there are more women than men on his intake.

I don’t think it could be seen as sex discrimination as both men and women can apply for the course.

NO ONE CAN AFFORD THE PENSION!

I’m sick of hearing how good the pension scheme is. Myself and most of the colleagues I speak to have opted out because they can’t afford the contributions.

You know there are hospitals issuing their staff nurses with food bank vouchers? How the hell can we afford to pay our pension when we can’t afford to eat!

@x2boys

Thats literally my point. Over the last 8 years plus minimum wage has been rising and will rise again April 23 yet nurses wages have remained the same. As a result you are now financially better off not training to be a nurse.

Unsociable hours pay not what it used to be. It’s been heavily reduced so you get barely anything extra now.