To think NHS course students should be made to pay tutition fees for their courses

[reallytired]

A band 5 nurse starts on 21K and this salary will rise through out their career. It is not an exceptional salary, but it certainly aint the worse paid graduate job. I have a friend who is a band 7 nurse and she is doing very nicely. There other nhs degrees where people can do an earn a living outside the nhs like physios or dietitians.

I feel its unreasonable that teachers have to pay for student loans to cover tutition fees and not nurses. Surely a good teacher is as valuable as a nurse.

Aye

All the teachers whinging about how hard their job is ( and i'm not denying it is)but I don't see them working Xmas day/ new year/ public holidays/ or 12 hour night shifts.

In Scotland the NHS bursary scheme is awarded according to what shortfall there is in the service - they have been cut drastically. The course I am working towards in my low paid night shift job will cost £9000 a year.

Teaching training in Scotland is free with. guaranteed 18k probationary year - the result is a surplus of teachers and. O one can get a job.

Why should we pay I trained hard to become a doctor my training is still ongoing Most medical degrees are damned hard and require a lot of discipline and sacrifice. You sound jealous. How sad you must be.0

We do get a free flu jab though.

Having completed a midwifery degree that nearly killed me and my relationship/family life, to have been left with even more debt than we accrued even with fees paid and the small bursary would have just about finished me off. A huge proportion of nursing and midwifery applicants are mature students, with mortgages, childcare and other life worries to consider, if you take away the 'free' aspect of the course and the bursary (which is means tested anyway) then you'll be missing out on a lot of dedicated healthcare workers.

But if nurses are free? Why should doctors have to pay?

if you think about it Doctors are more useful in being alot more skilled, have to train longer?

I think alot of things in the NHS are unfair.

YABU don't be ridiculous. As if what we need is less people interested in working for the NHS. You do sound jealous. And quite stupid

LRD Most doctors are not from overwhelmingly rich families! A few are, a few are from an overwhelmingly poor background and the rest are scattered around in the middle.

I qualified in the late 90s and there weren't many overwhelmingly rich people in my year! I was fairly typical - not privately educated, 2 working parents who made ends meet but I wouldn't say comfortably, no overseas holidays or flash cars - not exactly the millionaire lifestyle.

Most doctors are middle class

Were the father was a GP and mother was a teacher that Dort of thing were as many nurses are working class or lower middle class.

I wouldn't say that many doctors are upper class although I am sure some are not many holidays being a junior doctor they earn less than nurses and even if they didn't the hours they have to put in to complete their course they don't have time time.

Think it depends on what you mean by rich, IteotYEARawki. I'd say any family where the income is over £40k is pretty well off. In my experience, the vast vast majority of students fall into this bracket.

Wow! I havn't logged in for months, but couldn't let this one go.

I am a band 6 senior staff nurse. Which includes being qualified as a mentor to teach, assess and pass/fail students on their placements.

This thread is typical of some people who actually have no idea of the realities of nursing inpatients. My students have it tough and basically hand their lives over to this profession for the duration of their training and beyond! As well as having to fulfill a massive book of assessment criteria for each placement, which they have to pass. They also have exams, essays and presentations to prepare for and submit during this placement time. It is not for the faint hearted or the lazy. They earn every penny.

I will not comment on the teachers situation, as I have not done teacher training and have no idea of the realities of that.

As for our lovely Docs. Well, we have FY1's and FY2's who also have placements on our wards. We have a new set every few months, so they can get their experience and knowledge up in different areas. These are our ward doctors that we work along side, with the Consultants. How do you think that is on their first day, first week, for them and us?!

Nurses run the wards. We know our patients individual needs because we nurse them around the clock. We assess, treat and evaluate, bringing in the doctors when needed. It's the way it is.

Don't get me started on our disgustingly paid nursing assistants either! They are very well respected where I work. They are the eyes and ears of the ward and if I have a bloody good N.A. on shift, they are worth their weight in gold.

Ok, so I went off on a tangent. A rant is good for the soul every now and again. All I wanted to say was, the students earn their keep and they don't even know they are going to get a job in the NHS afterwards!

Ite - well, I have no stats, but I think yellow is right about why we disagree. Probably what I'd call rich you'd call middle class.

The point remains true however you want to define it though - if you are from a poor background, especially if you have family to support, five years of unpaid study plus loans is going to be very off-putting.

I do think if your family earn over 40k yes, you are well-off.

Oh ... just realized part of the problem. You misread what I said. I said 'overwhelmingly from', not 'from overwhelmingly rich families' - those are totally different things.

YABU. I'm currently doing a nursing degree and it's working out to be (more or less) 7 weeks study in uni and 7 weeks placement. Obviously the placements vary but the clinical and residential ones are 37.5 hours per week, and are shift work. This makes it hard to hold down even a very part time job alongside training, to bring a bit of extra money in. Most people on my course are mature students with families and have come out of part time or full time work to do their training.

YABU

I'm a nurse who hasn't had a pay rise for many years so IMO our pay is not reasonable. I doubt when we do start to receive pay rises again that they'll compensate for the lengthy rise freeze.

If they took away the bursery I suspect the number of applicants would drop dramatically. There has to be some incentive to being a student nurse because right now in the conditions we're working under they are not particularly luring/appealing.

I should have said 7 weeks in uni, then 7 weeks placement, alternated for the whole 3 years. I wish I could do a degree in 14 weeks