To think that nurses do very well financially actually

[Nurseybigbucks]

Hear me out.
I know that people are always going on about shitty nurses salary and how hard they work etc and believe me, I get that the job is often shit and getting shitter and they have to work hard, but I can't get behind them being low paid.

My DP has recently qualified as a nurse, she was lucky in that NHS paid for her degree, now that's stopped it does make a difference but this low pay nurse thing has been spouted for longer than it's been stopped.

She's just started her first job out of Uni on a salary of £30,000 for the NHS. This is above national average salary but closer to average in our area (London). She gets paid extra for night shifts and weekends or bank holidays so the total she'd earn would be around £35k in year 1.

There are not many jobs paying £35k in year one out of Uni, certainly not from courses that are so easy to access in terms of what you need to be accepted onto the courses.

And that's just for a basic (band 5) nurse. If you have something about you then you'll move up to a higher pay band within a couple of years max really and there are lots of higher paid jobs for the right personnel and LOTs of opportunity to upskill and earn more and LOTs of opportunity to work extra should you choose, with private work being particularly lucrative.

I earn around £50k in finance but expect to be the lower earner within 5 years or so.

Again, I get how hard they might work, but lots of people work hard and hard work vs pay is not a linear graph in any career.

I think that nurses are pretty well and fairly paid and they enjoy a fantastic pension if working in the NHS. So Mumsnet, AIBU?

I've been qualified 5 years. I just started my first band 6 post so my basic is 30k (I'm in the north so no london weighting). I'm lucky, clinical band 6 roles in my area (mental health) are getting to be like rocking horse shit. Everytime someone retires out of one it gets downgrades to a 5. Your choices are massively limited to management and the shift allowance goes with that so you find a top of band 5 staff nurse could potentially out earn their manager with the right combination of shifts. Indeed due to higher enhancement rate it took 2 years of being qualified before my take home pay was more than my top of band 2 care assistant DP.

It's unlikely you will ever be the low earner in your relationship. Very few nurses ever get to the band 8+ positions and they are mostly management posts.

Having just got out of hospital after an emergency operation and a week of incredibly good medical and nursing care, I can confidently say we are not paying nurses nearly enough for what they do and the level of responsibility they hold.

It's the working conditions and the worry about losing your registration for making a human error whilst overworked which I think are the major problems. In areas where the cost of living is cheap I think the salary is OK. In London I think 30k with significant student debts is not a great salary for an important, responsible job. I know many manage on less, but that isn't the point. Many hospitals are struggling to recruit and retain nurses, so clearly the current package isn't good enough to meet staffing needs. Yes if nurses progress their salary can be a lot more, but not all nurses are able or want to progress to higher paid roles, and knowing you may earn more in 5-10 years doesn't pay the bills this year.

In fairness, possibly the £30k is due to: a) working in London and b) night/weekend enhancement and overtime.

OP, YABU. The government used to pay a bursary, now that is gone. Student nurses are used as free labour in hospitals and come out with debt. Then as a NQ nurse they are given around 18 patients to have sole responsibility for, and blamed when one falls and breaks her hip because the nurse was busy giving meds in another area and couldn't keep her eyes on them.

Personally I think a lot of the dissatisfaction with nurses working conditions has far more to do with safer staffing ratios, underfunded services and lack of resources, and (in some areas) the risk of violence and intimidation from the public, than it has to do with the basic pay. None of us trained in order to be millionaires, but we all want to be safe and effective practitioners who have the time and resources to care for our patients.

God I agree so much with this. I'd take more well trained staff, supportive management and proper resources to do my job over a pay rise right now.

What an odd post. You just have to look at the pay scales to understand salary’.starting salary is around £24. If your in London you get inner London weighting our outer due to cost of living and that can add another 5k. Not sure why there is an issue here given that nurses now all do degrees , they now have to get student loans and no longer get bursaries. So are no different to any other post grad who will have large debts they need to pay off. The issue with nursing is the increase in salary is tiny, to make any difference you need to climb the bands. Once you reach the top you only receive the usual government guided pay increase which is always under inflation so you end up feeling poorer. You don’t get over time in the NHS anymore, you have to be signed up to a bank or agency to do extra hours and these are capped with the WTD. A lot of nurses stay at Band 5 for most of there career, it everyone is cut out for senior management or are interested in it

Spare a thought for veterinary nurses so.

Please come and work with me in A+E for just one shift and we'll then discuss if the pay starting salary is fair.

Also - 30k is not the average starting pay, so your partner is doing well

A busy, overworked but very conscientious nurse saved my life after I'd had my second baby. She was the only one who noticed how ill I was when a doctor had discharged me and she sat with me for hours after her shift had finished until the early hours of the morning on an understaffed ward feeding my baby because I could not and nagging to get me seen and moved to a high dependency ward. I don't think they get paid anywhere near enough.

I earn around £50k in finance but expect to be the lower earner within 5 years or so.

Can you explain why?

Im not a Nurse but on visiting my BFF in Hospital last year ,cant believe how hard they work and how they are responsible for many more people than they should be ! The NHS is on its knees ,with Govt cutbacks ,the elderly ,and so on, and FL staff bear the brunt ! A friend whose daughter nurses is also pregnant and was expected to work a 12 hour day !.Also no extra money for working on BH either ! I take it you are not expecting to swap your cosy office for her busy ward any time soon ?!!

tabby- having been an HCA I totally disagree . Most nurses will do patient care when they can . They get foisted with lots of other jobs eg flow coordinating, dealing with MDT meetings, audits, drug management etc but I’ve not met a nurse who would refuse to do turns, washes, bed making etc. I did HDU and critical care shifts , on a neurosurgery unit - very, very much a team effort, even the ward sister helped out with meals and washes if she wasn’t busy .

That said I knew I was getting less per hour than the domestics that made cups of tea and cleaned the sluice , and that always upset me .

I don't think many people train for a career as a nurse for the money. They certainly don't if they plan to work in the public sector. Long shift patterns, enormous responsibility for patient welfare and health, lots of paperwork, meetings with colleagues, dealing with relatives, exposing themselves to all sorts of extreme life situations including death, assault, abuse...personally, I think they all deserve a medal. While they may expect an average to above-average salary at some point in their career, many nurses retire early due to personal injury and burn out. Therefore, over the course of their economically active lives, I think nurses do not earn a good salary and it does not reflect the responsibility, skill, and inherent danger/ risk associated with the job.

Nurses will stay on the same salary for their whole careers (unless they supplement with private work). It’s like pharmacy - the initial grad salary is great but after 10-20 years you do become the lower earner.

Chances are even if you failed in your job and got rock bottom rises your salary will still grow more each year on average than hers.

If you have something about you then you'll move up to a higher pay band within a couple of years max really

Sadly, this isn’t true. Trusts have cynically used afc to suit their own purposes and there will be very little opportunity for the majority of nurses to progress beyond band 5. Higher bands are strictly rationed even though many band 5 nurses are undertaking the role of a higher grade with no promotion and no extra money.

Few people outside nursing will experience or understand the pressures and responsibilities involved and morale in the profession is very low. Add to that a governing body (NMC) that demands more and more of it’s members but doesn’t give a shit about them and it really isn’t the jolly you think it is.

I hope you don’t have to watch your DP burn out in a few years time but it’s a distinct possibility.

For the responsibility that they have? No they are not well paid. Also think about the difficulties that they face with eg securing childcare given that their shifts are not a basic 9-6pm and working from home is not an option.

Actually given how responsible and demanding a job nursing is these days I think it needs to be paid at say 60% of G P rates . I know a lot of London GPs who earn well over £100k for less anti-social hours and we learned on a different thread that it is the pharmacist and not the GP who is liable for prescribing cock-ups! Not a race to the bottom or GP bashing but they seem to have been able to negotiate well for themselves whilst reducing their workloads/hours over the past 30 years and nurses have not whilst increasing their responsibilities etc.

Yes OP, that’s why the gvt has put out the desperate TV and radio ads for nurse recruitment, why there were 42,000 unfilled nursing post vacancies in the NHS (as of last figures produced Sept 2018 by NHS Improvement), a number which is rising year on year; why more registered nurses than ever before are suffering burn out and are leaving the profession.

There are definitely some quite well paid nursing jobs, I've known plenty of people who have them. A lot depends on what the particular specialty is and any extra qualifications/training and experience the nurse has.

One thing is always certain, there will be a job for a nurse, maybe part time which is very useful for those with children. Practice nurses (& midwives) are quite well paid too.

Do you not have any concept of the level of responsibility your DP has? I was clinical and worked in a critical care environment that saw me making decisions that, if they went wrong, could kill people.

Actually kill them. Make them dead.

Is £23k worth that?

I have a nursing related office job now. I get paid more and honestly have so much less responsibility. I deserve my wage but clinical staff deserve more.

You seem to post this on MN a lot.

This is my 1st post on the subject. I'm a regular poster but this is my 1st post under this username.

most nurses will stay band 5 for the majority of their career

If they want to stay as a band 5 I get that but then they are choosing the low salary. If they are hoping to work up but are not able then I find it highly unlikely that they'd have earned more in a different career?

30k is not a starting wage for band 5 newly qualified nurse , it's more like 23k so yes yabvu because you arent even putting forward the correct information.

OK, £30k is a bit high, her employment letter states this (copy and paste) The pay band for this post is Band 5. Pay Range £29,057 - £36,134 per annum inclusive so over £29k but not quite £30k.

Interesting to hear all the comments. FWIW, my DP works far harder than I do (Here I am on Mumsnet!) and I get that some people are paid obscene amounts for what they provide to society but equally, where would we be without cleaners? But they struggle to earn £12 an hour even in London. Same with shop assistants, factory workers etc.

Just to sign off that I'm not being goady at all, we've discussed this at length as a household and wondered what other people thought. I have the utmost respect for nurses and ALL care workers, my mum and brother are care workers and my DP is a nurse, I think they are all amazing people doing amazing jobs. I just think that all things considered that nursing isn't awful pay but agree with a PP about the conditions often being terrible.

Yeah, working on a 24/7 shift pattern 365 days a year in an organisation which is breaking at the seams as it cannot deal with the demand for £23k a year (if outside of London) as a graduate who will now have racked up nearly £60k of debt probably sounds like it is paid really well. Especially as during university your placements mean you are essentially already working a job alongside studying; albeit not getting paid. Oh an trying to sort childcare for working nights, holidays etc, and sometimes you even get the priveldge of paying to park (if you can even get a space). Also you are very much mistaken with the likelihood of progressing at that rate. Absolutely look on with envy at my friends I graduated with who sit in an office doing a 9-5, no bank holidays etc who were on £30k straight out of uni. The vast majority of people who do nursing are incredible and sadly, a lot I don't think would complete training no matter how passionate they were if they knew the reality. People always say well it's your choice, but in reality the shortage of staff shows that people are choosing to leave, wages are only part of the problem, but this is so deluded.

If they want to stay as a band 5 I get that but then they are choosing the low salary.

No. Read the above posts. You are so wrong.

Your DP is being paid that amount at Band5 because she has London Weighting. That is not the national Band5. Band 5 is between £24,214 - £30,112 (not including enhancements) for staff employed since 1/4/18 not entitled to London weighting -

www.nhsemployers.org/pay-pensions-and-reward/agenda-for-change/pay-scales/annual

As an extra bit of joy you literally deal with life, death, every bodily fluid you can think of, sometimes angry (sometimes understandably) relatives. Few other professionals have to deal with that, hard work comes in many forms, but nursing for the physical and emotional demands of the job is pitiful. Carers and HCA's also are, and the 'people will do it because it's a vocation' safety net they've had for years is disappearing.

I will remind you again that nurses go to university and get a degree. Other post grad courses starting salaries can be 35k and above. Can we stop focussing on cleaners pay .... it’s not always a race to the bottom you know. Nurses are qualified and skilled individuals and should be appropriately recognised and that should include pay. It is no longer a ‘vocation’. Maybe be pleased for your DP doing well to qualify. Oh and a band 5 does not starts at 29k so your figures are wrong. Your obviously in London and she gets additional 5k inner London weighting is it would be 24,414 plus inner London.....