Nurses strike - this is wrong isn’t it?

[Twospaniels]

A nurse in the NHS dept I work in, is joining the strike today. However, she has taken annual leave so that she still gets paid. Not only that, she is the union rep!
Something very wrong there and really not in the spirit of the strike in my opinion.

If you are unhappy with them striking, move country.

It's not about the money (well it is really but), it's about the fact that there are not enough nurses to care for patients safely and the only way to get more nurses is for it to be an attractive career and money is a big part of that. People nurse because that's what they love if everyone just got a better paid job we would have a very big problem wouldn't we.

You have absolutely no idea what her personal circumstances are. If she needs the pay she needs the pay.
Its not in the spirit to look at each other and make jabs, its what the bastards in charge WANT you to do.

And that is what is happening, more leaving than joining. If your unfortunate enough to fall ill and require hospital treatment soon, don't complain your care in hospital is rubbish then if this is the view you hold.

Not enough people are wanting to become nurses because they see how low paid it is. Well someone has to do the job though and if everyone says no not for me its not enough money well we are fucked aren't we. You either make the job attractive enough or you don't - but if your going to stand by this stupid view then don't moan if you don't get the service you think you should get

Well I stand to be corrected on the fact that annual leave would not have been able to be booked after the strike date was issued. However she told me herself that she had booked it to avoid not getting a days pay 🤷🏻‍♀️

Our department is not inpatient nor is it an emergency department of any sort so she would not get called in to handle an emergency

I do think nurses deserve more pay, However I disagree that it is all down to lack of funding from the government. I can see in the service I work in that there is gross mismanagement of funds in a lot of ways that a company manager or director in the private sector would be appalled at.

If NHS is short of manpower, the management will only fill it up with unqualified workers. I suppose no one wants a degraded health system, isn't it?

I’m a midwife

my salary is not a bad salary but it’s a worse salary than it should be as it hasn’t kept up with inflation, my opportunity for progression has now been taken away from me (you hit the top of your band quicker and never get a rise from that unless you go up a band which means changing job entirely) and for what we do, we aren’t paid enough.

But the main thing is the working conditions. Literally nobody goes into nursing or midwifery training thinking ‘I’m going to train to do this so that I can be horrible and incompetent or make people feel awful and give them a bad experience’. There’s always experiences that make people behave that way. And those experiences come when you go to work stressed every day, knowing you won’t get a break, knowing you aren’t supported, knowing there won’t be enough staff on. And I can say from experience it is truly shit being scared you will go into work and someone will die because you can’t be in all the places at once and there just is nobody else to cover.

We just want to be paid commensurate with what we do, be supported to be the best clinicians we can be and give people the best care we can and that requires time and investment, not just an expectation that we will do it ‘for the love’ and sacrifice our own well-being.

As you work in the department you will be aware that once strike action is announced annual leave can’t be booked, but approved leave isn’t cancelled. Why do you think she should book leave that she had arranged before strike action was announced?

I'm a nurse, working in A&E. I voted for the strike, but A&E nurses are obviously not allowed to strike, for reasons of patient safety.
I'm actually not particularly unhappy with how much i get paid, I'm lucky to have a low mortgage and only one child.
What I'm not happy with is patients having to wait 8, 10, 12, 14, even, hours to see a doctor in A&E. And then if they are being admitted, waiting a further up to 24 hours in a corridor for a bed to come up.
It's easy for some people to criticise us and make out we're money grabbing mercenaries who don't give a fuck about our patients, however this is not my experience.
It's probably not something you can understand until it's you or your mum, or your child who's waiting hours and hours, then at that point you might realise what the point of the strike is.
The situation is desperate and we need to attract more nurses to train, and more to stay in the profession.
What else can we do??

I'm sure that nurse and other HCP love their jobs, but they still need to live, to eat to pay their bills and to have time off. The answer from some is 'go and get another job' so that means that we would have no one to do those jobs.The answer is to overhaul pay in general.

As does everyone, not just nurses. The current average salary in the UK is around £28k. The average salary for a nurse is around £33k. So they are no better or worse off than any other average joe.

I'm not disputing pay is shit, but it's shit for a lot of people. Not just nurses (or post men, or train drivers).

@Twospaniels Sorry, with respect, this idea that say, the chief executive of Tesco/Amazon could take charge of the NHS and "sort it out" is rubbish - even discounting how different a sector it is, I can assure you that Jeff Bezos would not be able to cope with constant interference and goal post moving by the Gov of the day!

The situation is desperate and we need to attract more nurses to train, and more to stay in the profession.

When I looked at nurse training a few years back@Nurse2022 it wasn't the salaries that was the problem, it wasn't that they weren't attracting enough people to train either - the nurse training degrees were hugely oversubscribed - more people wanting on than the Uni could take. The problem was after Uni, there wasn't enough jobs for all these people. The NHS weren't funding enough positions. I don't know if that is the case now though...

Hi @CornishGem1975 no that's not a problem now, to say the least. There are approx 50,000 vacant nursing posts in England and Wales 😱

So maybe it is the salary thing then @Nurse2022 as like I say they were hard fought courses to get on to. Especially paediatric and midwifery.

Although I have to be honest, the starting salary wouldn't put me off - it was the hours and shift work that prevented me in the end.

What is a problem is the number of nursing students dropping out before even qualifying - over 50% according to a number of newly qualified nursing colleagues (from different universities). Largely due to feeling unsupported by their universities and unhappy with the quality of their training.

That's bang on @Reallybadidea especially for those who are changing career. The Universities are not supportive at all. My friend was training and had no choice but to drop out after first year because they wouldn't pay any attention to the fact that they had children and placements were badly organised, last minute decisions on placements etc which meant she couldn't arrange childcare - they wouldn't allow students to swap placements if there was a better fit, it was literally suck it up. She couldn't, so she stopped training.

@CornishGem1975 there also used to be a bursary available while student nurses were training, which was scrapped, then reintroduced at a much lower rate (I think I'm correct in this, sure someone will correct me if not) so it's probably become a less attractive degree, because while on placement you're working full time and also trying to juggle academic work. I think they are also now liable for tuition fees?
The NHS couldn't function without student nurses, and if they're going to qualify with loads of debt and then not get a particularly good salary, then what's the point?
And like you say, we tend to work very long shifts (although the flip side is more days off than people who work 9-5. So you can work full time by only doing 3 long shifts a week.

There was a woman on my course who had 3 kids and was getting up at 4.30 on the days she was on placement in order to get 2 buses because she didn't drive, the uni just 🤷‍♀️

A lot of OPs who smell suspiciously like organised alt-right dog whistlers recently.

Or, as they'd phrase it, "Haven't you noticed how..." "Isn't it a shame that..." "My mate reckons..."

But the point is that nurses aren't your average Joe. They are working in a highly skilled graduate level profession, with patients lives in their hands and should be remunerated accordingly. (I am not a nurse)

On people thinking that there is mismanagement in the health service. I'm a retired public sector worker, (not NHS) Some bright spark where I worked decided to bring in a consultant to sort out the service. We had a chap who had no experience of the job we did, wasn't a public sector employee and thought he knew what to do after a very short period of digging into our processes. After completing cocking up the service he left to carry on cocking up elsewhere. And was paid a fortune. He did not even ask the drones who did the work any questions or really understood how it worked. Years later we had another reshuffle by someone who actually had done the job, and voila, we returned almost to the old system. If its thought that the health service generally needs a shake up ask how have we got here, are the government to blame for any of it ( I mean successive governments) and why don't those in charge actually listen to staff.

But so do others @dollybird Maybe not on the 'front line' like nurses, but I work in a company that provides nurses, doctors and surgeons with the means to do their job, and yes without the service that we deliver, people would die.

There was a woman on my course who had 3 kids and was getting up at 4.30 on the days she was on placement in order to get 2 buses because she didn't drive, the uni just 🤷‍♀️

Yes @Nurse2022 That happened here too - someone offered to swap so she could go to the one NEXT to her house, but nope, Uni refused to facilitate the swap.

Theres some misinformation in your post, because the pay scales have been revised a couple of times in the last 20 years, and yet wages have not really been revised to reflect the cost of living or inflation each time thats happened.
If what they were receiving now had the same pound value- in real terms- as it did 20+ years ago I might agree with you.

she told me herself that she had booked it to avoid not getting a days pay 🤷🏻‍♀️

Not possible.

she would not get called in to handle an emergency

During the heights of the pandemic, HCPs including nurses were redeployed all over the place, regardless of specialism.

I can see in the service I work in that there is gross mismanagement of funds in a lot of ways

How do you see this? What is your role that gives you access to all pieces of information in this way? What is your plan for doing things differently and when will you submit it to your board?

cool story bro