No jobs for student nurses?

[EachandEveryone]

Have you experienced this? I can’t quote facts and figures I’m just hearing it from the horses mouth. I’m on the oncology ward being treated for the past two years. I am a nurse for twenty five years. I cannot believe the junior nurses or students qualifying that they can’t get the jobs they have trained for because the trusts have no vacancies as they’ve over employed from elsewhere spending millions. They got their numbers wrong, one fantastic student told me two thousand nurses qualify a year in London alone and there is nothing only bank. When I qualified we had the pick of jobs everyone wanted us. I feel so sad it’s such a waste.

like I said I know nothing outside of what I’m hearing on the wards I’m getting my excellent care from.

has anyone got any newly qualified nurses in their family? Is it better outside London?

Yes,
it happened before - around 2007
they got the forecasts wrong,
and students graduated without jobs to go to,
it seems to even out though with usual attrition of staff

Here in sw they ask for 6 months experience so nothing for nq nurses, I trained in London in the days when you were guaranteed a job for 6 months after qualifying and you could choose your final management placement. There are plenty of b5 jobs but need experience. Whereabouts in the country are these nurses and students saying there are no jobs. The junior nurses have got a job, it's the 3rd year students who are affected.

I know someone who is in her last year of midwifery training. She’s very worried because there are no jobs at all. This is in north west England

I'd join the Bank, at least it's usual pay, you can choose your shifts, get pension and sick pay, it's awful and must be stressful for the students. Most nurses accommodation has disappeared too now.

I work in the recruitment sector and this is true, I know of midwives and nurses who have been unable to get jobs once qualified. i know of several that have gone into the prison health system. I think its easier if you go on to work in the area of the country that you qualified in as some students are securing jobs with the wards they did their placements on but lots are struggling.

The military offer jobs which can be a great life

There are no jobs for newly qualifieds in my Trust.

They aren’t being offered jobs on the wards where they did their final placements though. This is oncology she was told to interview but there are no jobs they will contact her when there are. Same on the gastric ward. Really why should they have to do bank it’s not secure we did it as a filler on our days off not to rely on for a regular wage.

and in other news, the 8bs management are having to go for their jobs again if they are there or go back to being a band 7. This doesn’t bother me so much as half of them have had no proper nursing experience or management experience they’ve often got their posts because if who they’ve known.

I should fight cancer whilst I’m putting the nhs to rights 😀😀 I don’t know why this hasn’t been on the news

Read in the news this morning that our hospital is looking at making frontline staff redundant, including nurses.

Yes, absolutely true. DS graduated in nursing two years ago and his RG university used to guarantee a job somewhere within the Trust (very big one mind you!) to anyone who wanted it. That has now disappeared and DS is aware of many recent graduates who haven't got jobs. Meantime on his ICU unit I can't believe the pace at which he has to work and how short of staff they are. There hardly seems to be any budget for Bank and none of the regular staff want to do overtime shifts as they have cut the overtime rate so it's not worthwhile. Instead, people are making ends meet by doing care work, injecting fillers or more random stuff like bar work!

What are the nursing unions doing about it? I was told it was because they over spent massively on overseas recruitment? How did they get the numbers so wrong?

I also feel sorry for those that do get jobs as the qualified nurses are so busy they can’t supervise them properly or make them feel safe.

@EachandEveryone
my teen dd is looking at nursing (I’m one too) but I read an article a couple of months ago in the telegraph about this very problem which is making me think she should do something else. Which is so sad when everyone feels so
overstretched.

If you ask DS he would say the union are doing very little about it! He is vocal in saying that as a mainly female-dominated career nurses make themselves look stupid against the (unsurprisingly, male-dominated!) medical profession when it comes to pay rises etc. The doctors have already been out on strike again this year following a much larger percentage increase than nurses got last year. Not going into the rights and wrongs of whether they should be on strike or not, but the doctors are definitely better-organised. He says it is difficult to even get a sufficient number of nurses to respond to consultations, strike ballots etc because nurses are generally caring and committed and spend (perhaps too much) time thinking about the effects on patient care of striking.

Has she thought about being a paediatric OT? Or speech therapy? My friends are very happy in their roles. Also paediatric nursing is quite a different ball game and might want to look into that. It’s such a shame as I have loved being a nurse.

It’s the same across all health care professional roles - including allied health professionals such as OT, SLT, radiographers, ODPs,
podiatrists etc they are all struggling to gain posts when qualified.

Australia?

Same for midwives and doctors.

It's the same in my area of Scotland, lots of our final year students are without jobs to go into and they graduate in a few weeks.

I qualified December 2024 and was incredibly lucky to have got a job out of my cohort of 70 there was 12 of us with jobs. Apparently nursing jobs going in waves there will be loads of vacancies then nothing for months.

My friend is studying to be a midwife and is very worried.
The midwives that have just qualified ahead of her haven't been able to get jobs in the surrounding hospitals

There was 40 graduates and 4 positions, 2 positions were only for overseas applicants and 2 from UK.
I honestly never realised that it wasn't just a given that they would go into NHS positions.

Elderly dad was in hospital (Southampton) and had fantastic young nurse. Caring, efficient, dedicated. Said she had two weeks left on temp contract can’t get a permanent job anywhere and is leaving for Australia. Wtaf?

Yes, health jobs in general. All that hard work and study for nothing. Where I am, none of the local hospitals have anything for newly qualified on NHS professionals either.

Don't get me started that nursing degrees never used to have tuition fees, that's another area to moan about.

It’s just horrendous I’ve never heard of it before. What’s gone wrong? I must’ve trained in the good old days where they paid you and there was plenty of bank as a student for drinking money. We could have any jobs we wanted and were all band sixes within a year and I best not mention how good the 1995 pension is.

Began my training in 2021, were told there were jobs for all that qualified. Uni linked in with trusts so trusts know numbers coming through. All good till 3rd yr when we were told that due to the number of international nurses recruited over Covid, and lack of funds there was a freeze on recruitment. Had a pool interview with 2 trusts and offered a job 35 miles from home. Friends qualifying this year seem to have it worse with even fewer jobs. Where I work have needed an OT and speech and language therapist for 12 mths and not been able to recruit so those may be better study options.