To think I can't keep this up till 67?

[GodImTired]

I' work in acute paediatrics in the NHS. We work 13 1/2 hour shifts with usually only 3/4 of an hour for break. I have a step counter and average 13500 steps on every shift sometimes nearly 20000. It's a mentally demanding job we are constantly under staffed and we are increasingly seeing more and more exceedingly unwell children. Our doctors are also stretched to their full capacity. I and nearly all my colleagues go above and beyond what we're meant to do for both the children in our care and their parents we know this as we frequently receive verbal and written comment to this effect. But we also receive endless trivial complaints about the food, the view out the hospital window, and other which are demoralising.
At the end of many shifts I'm mentally as well as physically drained.
I'm 51 due to time out to bring up my children I haven't paid enough pension to retire early so will work till 67. I'm increasingly thinking that this won't be physically or mentally possible. Also the NHS is literally falling to pieces I started nursing over 30 years ago I cannot believe it's got this bad. But I love my job have tried less demanding areas and hate it.
I'm aware it's not just nurses who are struggling many others in other occupations particularly the public sector must feel the same. What are we all going to do? Many are my age are leaving in droves pension or no pension. Are the jobs we love and feel passionately about eventually just going to wear us down? What are we going to do? Or AIBU should I thank my lucky stars I have a job hopefully till 67 (that's what are management tell us).

I am in the nhs and am only 49 and work 6 days a week....Jeremy Hunt wants GPs to work 7 days a week.....i have changed jobs and now only do 2 long days seeing patients and found a different job still in healthcare but office based for other 4 days...that is the only one i can see me being able to do until I am 67.

I find it outrageous that policemen can retire at 60 on full pension. I am sorry but their job is no harder physically than the OPs and many other nurses ...

What mummymeister said. If you can't keep something up till you're 67 then you'll have to find something else to do.

My friend is a nurse OP and she's training to teach nursing. Could you do that? I really feel for you it sounds awful.

One teeny tiny thing...

But we also receive endless trivial complaints about the food, the view out the hospital window, and other which are demoralising.

Does it help to think of

I find it outrageous that policemen can retire at 60 on full pension. I am sorry but their job is no harder physically than the OPs and many other nurses ...

Please don't turn this into a 'who's got it worse' argument. FYI the police pension contribution (nearly 14%) is significantly higher than those in other public services, hence the earlier retirement age.

I wonder how many people will physically able to do these demanding jobs at 67 years old (or older). My mum is 68 and retired two years ago. She is generally in excellent health, no arthritis or anything like that, but I don't think she could do 13500 steps a day on a 13.5 hr shift. She'd be absolutely on her knees after that - to say nothing of the mental toll of such a responsible job and working with the public, who are nothing if not demanding. Some jobs are just not doable once people get older - and from the sound of it you'd have to be in very good shape in your late 60s to still be able to manage all you do now.

If nursing is anything like teaching (FE) then they will be trying to get rid of you when you're in your fifties. I think you should get some sort of life assurance with redundancy allowances because once the threats actually start it's too late to get anything like that.

OP You must have trained about the same time as me.
I was in surgical until last autumn I've moved to Community, nice small hospital, they think they are busy, but it's nothing like the Surgical ward was. I'm also down to 24 hours a week, at 53 I can do this, or I can do full time and end up very sick/unable to walk and unable work at all. Now the mortgage is paid off, we can live on 24 hours a week.
Doing the 13.5 hour shifts has really done a number on my body, swollen ankles (That I never had in my life even when pregnant) and feet that hurt to walk on, getting out of the car was so painful after each shift I'd be close to tears.
I knew I should have gone to secretarial college back in the day

Have you actually looked carefully into your state pension OP? You will get credits for the years spent bringing up children- for most women with 2 children this can amount to 18 years.

You will receive 2 pensions- the state pension and your occupational pension, unless you are contracted out of the state pension. The state pension for women who don't have enough contributions will be just under £120 pw and for women who qualify for the full pension it's £160-ish pw. I qualify for the higher rate after having 35+ years of contributions, some of which are as a full time parent.

I think you need to do the maths and work out what you need. For example, do you have a mortgage? When will it be repaid? Are you single and a sole earner?

At 51, you have ample opportunity and time to change direction with your career. You don't have to carry on in exactly the same kind of work; there will be plenty of opportunities to offer nursing skills in other health care situations.

And you don't have to work till you are 67 unless you couldn't survive financially on your pension by retiring earlier. The bonus of the public sector is that you get very good pensions compared to those in the private sector. There are many men still working long hours in private companies. My DH is almost 62 and still travelling overseas with work, including long haul, and a normal day for him at work is 11 hours with a 50 mile round trip commute.

I think you need to sit down and work out your finances, perhaps putting money aside if you an into a private pension too, and looking at a sideways move into another sort of health care role, or a change of career where you can still earn, but maybe not so much.

If you can't keep something up till you're 67 then you'll have to find something else to do.

Realistically who is going to employ all these burnt out 60+ employees who can no longer physically manage the job they have done for a lot of their adult life? My mum has worked to 66 (part time from 60) but is in good health and doesn't do a physically tough job. Couldn't imagine her regularly doing a 12+ hour nursing shift. I suspect, sadly, that people will be performance managed out before their pensions kick in.

Is early retirement an option?

It's something that I've started to worry about, I've changed my lifestyle and got into weights, to try to keep as well as I can.

I used to work in Care homes and we had Staff that were in their late 60's. We did 12/15 hour shifts that were very physical.

We had a temporary cleaner that was 71, we felt that we should be sitting her down and making her a cup of tea, she was older than some of the residents.

It isn't realistic to expect everyone to be able to work in their late 60's, though and there isn't enough jobs to go round, anyway.

YANBU

I feel the same with and I'm only in my 20s, but have artheritis (had problems since I was a child)

It's so phsyically demanding, the government don't take things like this into consideration when they're forcing us all to work longer and longer though. Just because people are staying alive longer doesn't mean they're fit to work for longer. I sometimes look at the patients I'm treating who are in their 40/50/60's and think fucking hell, there's no way they could work until retirement. It fills me with dread

Nursing is dynamic though and there's so many other roles you can work towards that are less physically demanding, perhaps it's something you could look into and will put your mind at rest a bit

Is early retirement an option?

NHS trusts sometimes offer this, it's called MAS.

I think this is the same for a lot of jobs tho, not just nursing (not disputing that nurses work hard in a physically demanding job) I have heard managers commenting about staff - both nursing & admin - who are in their late 50's/early 60's that they are not really fit to be working & need to retire. I hope that medical advances mean that more people can stay healthy enough to work until 70 or God knows what will happen.

Realistically who is going to employ all these burnt out 60+ employees who can no longer physically manage the job they have done for a lot of their adult life?

I work for a charity that employs quite a few people age 60+ who have downgraded from a high-flying career to a part time one with lower pay but high satisfaction. V common esp in fields like finance, IT and marketing.

it is totally unrealistic to think that the working population can support people through a 40 year retirement.

I'm 45 . I'm a response officer in London , working full time on shifts . I will be working until I'm 55 , my colleagues with less service will be working until they're 60 . I should be working till I'm 60 , but I'm not going to , I'd rather take the hit on the pension than work another 5 years to get another £200 a month .

Every year it gets to be more effort . More effort to get up at 4am to go to work , do 12 hour plus shifts , then get home , only to get up 5 hours later and do it again . More effort to keep physically fit , because I seem to train longer and harder than nearly everyone else to keep to the same standard - being one of the oldest on the team . More effort to catch the 18 year old burglar or robber who is over twenty years younger than me , equipped with much more appropriate footwear , and a much bigger incentive to flee , plus who are these days much more likely to try and fight their way out of it when I lay hands on him .

I know of many many colleagues my age who are now undergoing back , hip and knee surgery , partly exacerbated by the fact that we are required to wear all our kit on a utility belt plus the body armour , which adds to about ten extra pounds to carry . Plus quite a few who will never draw their pension having literally died on the job . I'm convinced that's what the government want . It's cheaper to die in harness than to live to retirement .

Nurses , firemen , policing , and teachers too , it's a young persons game . The whole idea of having one career all your working life , that's over as far as I can see .

Personally as another poster said , I don't think any of the public sector should denigrate each other . Its not about who's better off, because the truth is , the government despises us all . Deride and rule , that's their plan . Don't fall for it .

I'm 47 and in the private sector and there is no way I will be able to my probably perceived as a cushy office job at 67 either. I'll never understand why some public sector workers think they are unique in this. I suspect I will be in job which is lower paid, probably much less skilled, much less enjoyable and outwith my industry in the years leading up to my retirement.

I have 18 years in a final salary pension and have been paying into another crap pension for 7 years.

What have I done? Probably still not enough, but I had limited time of for childcare as I couldn't afford the short or long term cost, planned long term financially to clear my modest mortgage early (at the expense of holidays, nicer cars, made do rather than expensive gadgets or home improvements etc), slowly built up some long term saving/shares over years.

What do you do? You still potentially have 16 working years ahead of you and plenty of time. Take control and plan ahead, speak to a financial advisor to review your current pension/savings etc to see how/if/when you can afford to retire or afford to change to a less demand job early and what you need to do to achieve that (might mean being very frugal now for a few years). Put a plan into place to retrain if that's what you need to do.

What don't you do? Sick your head in the sand for another 10 years, think woe is the public sector worker and hope someone else plans your finances in retirement for you, because they wont.

I'm an HCA and I do a lot of the heavy lifting, turning, hoisting etc.

I am nearly 35 and I admit that I already find it really physically exhausting. I am quite physically weak and don't have a great back and I leave every ward shift feeling battered. I stopped doing 12.5 hour shifts because of it but I had to do bank work as wards don't want someone who do half a shift as permanent staff.

I have an interview for a clinic post on Monday. It's so much easier physically. Yes, you do a lot of walking and you are up and down but you get to sit down in the room when they have their appointment. They are 9 hour shifts but the pace is lovely. Many people find it boring but I love it.

I know there is NWIH I could do ward work until I'm 67. I have met colleagues who are much older than me who are fine with the physical work but it's not really for me.

I would definitely look into clinic work if I was you.

It's only going to get worse for hands on staff too, given the rise in challenging conditions. Increased strokes, increase in obesity etc. All making for a population very physically demanding to care for.

I'm 55 and self employed
I cannot carry on working like this til January 2027 , which is when I claim my state pension
I'm going to sell up in 2 years and live on what is left

I'm 51 too and I was talking about this to a colleague yesterday.

I do a desk job - yes I do long days sometimes, and I do a fair bit of overseas travel (I've just got home from a trip - have been travelling for the best part of 24 hours due to a cancelled flight). But what I do is nothing compared to nursing - it's not physically tiring and if I fuck up no one gets ill or dies.

And yet even in a cosy desk job, I am aware that I am getting less effective when working long hours or travelling a lot. I may still be able to do my job in 16 years but it's almost certain that I will be a lot less productive than I am now.

My partner works in finance. He's under a huge amount of pressure to secure the same returns for his clients in a difficult financial climate while also being responsible for his staff complying with a complete overhaul in the industry, all whilst regulators are actively looking for scapegoats and imposing stringent rules that no one has fully defined. A mistake could easily destroy his career, or put paid to a client's life savings, which would arguably upset him more. I'm not making comparisons but I also have no idea how he is going to survive another 30 years.

misti I work in a high pressured high physical HCP role and I still found my desk job the most stressful job ever. Not physically, but mentally fuck no. It wasn't for me, I couldn't cope with it. In this job I have a high workload and it's extremely stessful but I still look back on that desk job and shudder. If yours is anything like mine was I'm not surprised you think you'll be less productive.

Doilooklikeatourist "I'm going to sell up in 2 years and live on what is left"

yes, part of my plan for retiring early is to leave London. The place is already too much and too overwhelming for me anyway. I can't downsize as I already live in a small place, but I will watch the market carefully - in 40s now - and if I have to go and live somewhere totally new, I would consider a worthwhile adventure and if it got me out of working...!

I do have my own pension but tbh I don't see that pensions are much to get excited about - I've only ever had ones where the employer gives nothing or next to nothing though. So when OP says people are leaving in spite of job security and pension, I can see why. I am endlessly looking for the next cost that can be cut. I have a holiday in a cheap place in Wales and I'm actually already wondering about cancelling it - these days I measure everything in how many hours it takes me to earn it!