To feel sad about the figures on nursing released today

[noodleaddict]

It seems like the crisis in nursing is only going to get worse.

More UK nurses and midwives leaving than joining profession
www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-40476867

Sad probably doesn't really describe it actually. Patient care is going to suffer. There is no doubt about it. I see a downward spiral happening and I don't know what to do about it.

We need reintroduction of bursaries for training, we need a pay rise, we need better staffing, we need to reduce the reliance on agency.

When is the government going to wake up??

I had my booking in midwives appointment today and was absolutely delighted to see my midwife who did all my antenatal care during my pregnancy with DD. Was thinking how utterly brilliant that continuity of care was - it was great to chat to her about everything, and she remembered all sorts about how stressful my job had been last time, and how traumatic the birth had been, and we were chatting about it in depth. Then I heard this on the news on the radio on the way home and it really hit me how much seeing a familiar face really brightened my day today, and I like knowing that she already knows my history well and that I'm not just a random name to her. It's so sad that fewer people will get that continuity now due to the turnover.

I really hope things improve within the NHS, and hope all the nurses and midwives reading this thread know just how appreciated they are.

There are also a third of nurses due to retire in the next ten years. I can get half my pension in 9 years and go at 55 and cannot wait. If I need to keep working thereafter it will certainly not be in nursing. Huge crisis looming methinks.

The stories here about experienced nurses being pushed out of the profession actually make me want to cry. I could never have survived as a newly qualified without support and inspiration from experienced nurses, even more so those who had been doing it for donkeys years and still maintained an overwhelming passion for caring whilst bringing their wealth of clinical experience and knowledge to the workplace. At this rate nobody is going to stay in the profession for 30+ years and those kind of nurses simply won't exist any more.

And family friendly policies are nonsense. I left district nursing after 13 years because they couldn't guarantee set working days to accommodate childcare. This service is instrumental in keeping people out of hospital and is on its knees. Foolish and short sighted management lost a lot of staff.

The demands on the nhs are extreme at the moment. The population is aging, and people are surviving illness that would previously have killed them.
Patients care is becoming more complex and hospital stays much shorter, all placing more demands on nurses. There is little career progression if you want it, perhaps a leaf out of medicines book might be required for career progression not exactly but at least so you aren't waiting for someone to retire to get some progression.
The pay freeze will have affected nurse moral, and as inflation rises it makes early retiral for nurses more appealing.
There is a lack of flexibility for nurses juggling demands of family, there is a reluctance to guarantee set days so nurses can find themselves paying for childcare they don't utilise, and scrabbling about to find stand in childcare as their shifts don't suit.
I think the drop in numbers of nurses is multi factorial, but all issues that could be addressed. Nursing needs to recognise that some of the issues are ones of people's perception, of it not being regarded as a profession as such. Perhaps trying to move a little away from the Florence and her lamp image of nursing may help.
I very much know that nursing is about caring, but sometimes that's not the key skill. Faced with a grumpy nurse who can identify when my condition is deteriorating, act appropriately, and deliver the correct treatment or a nurse who is super caring and lovely but doesn't recognise my worsening state, I know who I'd rather have.
A pay rise might be a short term fix but to be honest I'd probably be happier if my work load returned to that of 2010 levels!

To the people saying they dont think they would evever get on a midwifery course now is the time. I'm involved with a russell group uni with a very highly thought of midwifery course.... I can pretty much guarantee we will have places at clearing this year which is unheard of. Word on the street is we will take anyone this year.

Floralnomad

Sounds about right! the correct boxes will be ticked initially to "union proof" the department and will all be recorded to show all the steps that were taken to support and resonably accommodate…..

but second day back on the shift the bleepholder will come and take away your HCA anyway and you'll be left with nobody to do the heavy moving for you….

Nursing needs to recognise that some of the issues are ones of people's perception, of it not being regarded as a profession as such.

Exactly, I've seen this sentiment a lot from various public sector workers!

PLEASE STOP CALLING US HEROS, ANGELS, SAINTS etc! It feeds into the whole "calling" not profession perception!

We're people doing a job, with bills and mortgages and families and backs and knees that can only take so much abuse, and we're no more immune to trauma and stress than anyone else!

It wouldn't have been so bad if the HCA had been willing to help but half the time I couldn't find her and the other half she was saying yes I will be there in a minute and never came . I had 90 yr olds that only got turned once in the entire night , it was completely unacceptable , and the band 6 was also always too busy - sitting on her hands at a computer I think . Not what I went into nursing for at all .

I should have made clear, I work roughly 50% of weekends and was have throughout my career, I don't expect m-f working and I don't want it tbh.

But my OH also has to work occasional weekends. We can live without ever having weekends off together but I can't magic a weekend childminder out of my rectum.

When I qualified there was a lot of goodwill in wards. You'd stay late to help, be allowed home a bit early another day in return. Come in on days off and annual leave, get overtime pay.

Now, nothing. But they still expect the goodwill from the staff. We're professionals, not angels who do it for love.

In my last nhs post I was line managed by a non clinical admin person, who doesn't have a PIN. I mean, really? What sort of clinical supervision are they supposed to be able to offer me? Incredibly insulting.

Anyway I really like my current post. I have autonomy, a reasonable salary, a small Christmas bonus and we get on well as a team. No pension, no sick pay though.

As a student nurse, I am actively frightened.

It's difficult enough to train in a system under this much strain (50% of nursing degree education is delivered in work placements, by nurses who are also having to look after patients, and although I have nothing to compare it too, I'm very confident in saying that this placement education has been compromised by the current disasters). I'm frightened of what the system will look like when I qualify, and whether there will be anyone left to work beside me when I am feeling my way through being a qualified nurse.

The UK is getting older and sicker. We need more nurses. But we don't look after nurses when they're students, and we certainly don't look after them when they register. I'm not surprised that the nursing workforce is deciding not to look after us anymore either.

I think the move to non-degree nurses (nursing associates, theoretically degree-level apprenticeships) is frightening as well. The evidence is clear that higher-educated nurses mean better patient outcomes. Producing cheaper nurses via reduced training is false economy.

PossumInAPearTree - not the case in my area. Around 500 plus applicants for around 12 course places.

I'm debating if I should let my midwifery registration lapse. I qualified only a few years ago and I'm in my forties. It's not the career I'd thought it would be. Women are short-changed in their care and the good will of staff is pushed to its limit. Shifts are rubbish - at one point I was only privy to my roster a week before it commenced - and when I was a band 5 I ended up working mostly weekends and nights as I was cheap to employ. I've been bullied too and sadly I've seen it happen to others. The stress before I go in for a shift is awful. I just need to convince myself that jacking it all in will be for the best in the longer term. Not so hard after reading my post back.

Stupid as it sounds one of the things that was the final nail in the coffin for me was the Christmas duty allocation . I had a night only contract due to being a ft carer at home during the day and worked 1 night a week, following my first op in theory if I'd had a good second arm I should have been back at work the week before Christmas . I was given Christmas Eve night and New Years night on the roster , as it was I was off sick but that just about summed up how much I was valued .

I've been a nurse for 35 years. Qualified in 1985. I haven't nursed for 5 months, never been happier.

The thing that helped me make the final decision to leave was the re-registration process. I'm not prepared to go through the process. I'm currently looking for a new, non medical job.

This makes extremely sad reading.

Vintage - I was dreading revalidation but it actually wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. However I just could not see the point of it, well maybe the reflections, but having to provide pieces of evidence from patients/ collegues/ students to say you are a good nurse? Really. Thank god I will hopefully only have to revalidate one more time then I will be calling it a day at 55 ! I have a few very experienced collegues who feel the same as you though and will not re-validate. Some have started working as HCA's instead and some have just retired early.

I think re-validation is a good thing actually

Before re-validation I knew a good handful of nurses who did the bare minimum hours to "keep their pin" which was something like two dozen shifts a year

They were awful on agency or bank shifts, didn't want to be there, very de-skilled, but hanging on to their PIN "just in case" even though they had either given up work or had another non-nursing FT job.

Re-validation is pointless for permanant staff, yes, but for agency staff (who just do agency) I think it's necessary, however in order to "capture" them we're all in the net.

A coasting ex-nurse (in all ways except for still having a pin) who does just a handful of random long days a year - revalidation is going to be a big challenge and might make them re-consider if they're actually still competent to do the few shifts that they do do IYKWIM

God revalidation was a fucking pain. I was due to revalidate the week before I returned from maternity leave and was in the first lot to actually do it. Asked for a months extension from the NMC so I could get all my things together from work and they refused saying I'd had 3 years to do it, nevermind my trust had only started doing the guidance sessions for it the week I had my baby. Pointless paper collecting exercise imo.

I don't have a problem with the validation, I think it essential. It's the new process I object to.

As an OH nurse who works mainly from home it's very difficult. I work remotely on a zero hours contract for a company that are 3.5 hours drive away.

Agency nurses and agencies are a convenient scapegoat for the government to lay the blame on. It's too complex to get into but there are lots of costs associated with employment such as HR, payroll, holiday and sickness that are included in the agency charge. If the agencies disappear there will be a huge staffing crisis.

Macca I don't think anyone is saying that agencies should disappear, but ultimately they are private, profit-seeking businesses. The NHS spent an estimated £3.7bn on agency staff in 2015-16. I don't know how much of that translated into private profit but I'm willing to bet it was a substantial amount. When the NHS employs staff directly it is not having to pay that cost. It is hard therefore to see how reliance on agency staff to fill posts can be cost-effective.

Of course there are excellent agency staff, but many people find them frustrating to work with when they are not familiar with local practices and paperwork. They might not have the same skills and training as permanent staff, and do not share the same responsibility as they might never go back to that area again. Patients then suffer because they are not getting continuity of care.

You're right though in that using agencies as a scapegoat is wrong. The use of agency staff is only a symptom of many wider issues, many of which have sadly been discussed above. These include pay, recruitment, staffing, workload, contracts, hours, morale, paperwork, lack of senior staff, lack of managerial support, etc. I could go on and on. The crisis is deep

yes. Banning/capping agency doesn't solve the gaping hole that the agency staff were filling. It doesn't solve the issue just a symptom.

But there are some types of agency nurses that are (were) a problem in themselves under the old style self certifying NMC paperwork who had no interest in keeping up to date and had moved on from nursing but were still clinging onto their PINs through bare minimum hours. It was very common. I think new re-validation discourages that.

My workplace used to use a lot of Agency HCA's. Most were newly arrived from African countries, could barely speak English and usually fell asleep on a nightshift ( probably from doing day shifts followed by a nightshift on the same day). Now they would rather pay their own staff overtime rate than use the Agency.