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 didn’t see the government’s claims re 30% btw so I’m not basing it on that, I’m basing it on the calculators released at that time, such as this

www.nhsemployers.org/tchandbook/annex-1-to-3/annex-2-pay-bands-and-pay-points-on-the-second-pay-spine-in-england

Showing that bottom band sevens on £31696 before the deal, will be on £40,894 by the time the three year uplift is completed.

I know it wasn’t as generous for all bandings, I’m just providing evidence to PP saying NHS staff deserve a pay rise that we have very recently been given one :)

Again, perspective: prior to joining the NHS the only ‘pay rise’ I ever got was when the government slightly increased NMW. So I haven’t had that perception in the world of work that everyone should be receiving pay rises as a matter of course. Many people will be on the same shitty low wage for years on end with only slight increases when the government adds a few pence onto NMW. The NHS is fab in that regard.

I started at the bottom of band seven. Over the three years, the pay deal meant a rise of approx 30%. I don’t see the issue that they included the incremental rises in that figure personally as it’s still a pay rise, even if we’d have gotten a proportion of that anyway, the fact remains that bottom band sevens were given a 30% rise over the three year deal. I didn’t mean 30% in a single rise, should have specified it was 30% over three years.

It's an issue because it's completely misrepresented the pay deal and has been used as justification for a below inflation pay rise.

The pay deal had a huge amount of criticism for being overly complicated and unclear how the rise would be implemented. The calculators misrepresent the pay deal when discussing percentages because as I've said you would have already gotten the majority of the rise from increments anyway.

I agree re nhs pay being good compared to private in many areas. I too came from years of NMW work so fully appreciate my salary and the fact I gain increments.

I just cannot stand the misunderstanding surrounding the pay deal. I sat in so many union meetings and most members didnt seem to fully grasp it. I read the full document and it was a joke. I'm astounded most of the unions didnt kick up a fuss about it.

You can’t take a wage with London premium added and compare it. I’m a midwife, band 5. I make £23,000.

For that I work 37.5 hours a week, except I have to start my clinic 30 mins early as otherwise my patients are walking into a dark room with no equipment.

I work through my unpaid lunch break almost every single day and I usually finish at least 30-60 mins late every day as my clinic will always run behind due to stupidly short 10 minute antenatal appointments. So I’m actually working around 46 hours a week.

These extra hours are unpaid, I’ve raised it over and over again to be told I need to manage my workload better, except it’s impossible without giving patients poor care.

If you work it out I’m being paid what basically amounts to minimum wage. For a 3 year degree, thousands in student debt, no work life balance, working unsociable hours and barely seeing my kids. On what planet is that ok?

Did the calculators/tables specify that the rise was in addition to increments (so a lie)? Or was it just laid out as a rise and people were unhappy because they were going to receive part of that rise already anyway?

I’ll defer to you on this as you’re clearly much more on it than I am, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the process behind it, just looked up the figures once it was agreed and was delighted: even if I’d have received a smaller rise without the pay deal, the additional money was very welcome (and I don’t really expect to receive payrises anyway as I’ve mentioned, so anything is a bonus).

I’m a 6. People coming into my role now stay as a 5. Our lead left last year, she was a 7 and her job has been taken over as a 6. People aren’t “choosing” to stay in a 5, the 6 and7 jobs are vanishing.

The calculators etc were just not clear either way. There were many articles and threads on here after the psy deal was implemented where people were confused about how little it actually was. Like I said my pay literally didnt not change. If anything it was less than the month before because I'd done a few more nights that month. Many people also found their take home was actually less because the rise had taken them into the next pension bracket which again was not factored in by the calculators or really that clear.

Anyway pay deal aside I'd still have forgone the increase if we could have had more well trained staff, more resources and better management. I truly believe that pay would not be an issue if people working environment was so bloody intolerable.

Add in the bank shifts and a lot of HCAs get paid vv well.

I’m a 6. People coming into my role now stay as a 5. Our lead left last year, she was a 7 and her job has been taken over as a 6. People aren’t “choosing” to stay in a 5, the 6 and7 jobs are vanishing.

It makes me so mad. This sort of thing is letting the public down. Once upon a time a community mental health nurse was a band 6 role, it was almost the natural progression from ward work where you would build up your confidence and knowledge and skills and then move into the community. Community work requires a lot more knowledge and clinical judgments because you are working on your own. Now everytime a band 6 CPN retires the post is downgraded to a band 5. You have newly qualified nurses out there working with an increasingly difficult client group with little experience. We as a nation deserve more from the NHS. Not penny pinching and cutting corners.

I'd happily see their pay doubled. Them, the armed forces, the police, doctors. All of whom I can't do without. Finance? Yes, I understand I need that but what do you actually do for £50K? I mean, I can quantify a nurse - he or she taking blood, saving lives, wiping up mess, identifying things I would have no idea about. But what does a finance person do for £50K of my tax money?

NHS nurses are woefully underpaid for the job they do OP. I am a nurse but I work in the private sector now. Working in the NHS almost broke me when I first qualified. The amount of responsibility, expectation & emotional burden is crushing. I was still in preceptorship-qualified just 3 months- and was left on a specialist 24 bedded medical ward with half of the patients under my care with a band 5 nurse in charge of the whole ward (who had been qualified 1 year).

We were meant to have 6 patients each. That night we had double. Double meds, double bloods, double IVs, double obs, double risks, double notes, double care.

That night I had 3 patients go onto the sepsis pathway and one into peri arrest. The sort of stuff that cannot wait, so you divide yourself in 4 and probably give substandard care as a result. No magical team of nurses swooped in to help, because there was no one to spare. Just myself and one other nurse, and at one point the crash team. I will never work in the NHS again-it was singularly the most terrifying night of my career. I went home and couldn't even sleep, I just cried. I didn't go into nursing to feel like I am failing every day at caring.

NHS nurses deserve a starting salary of at least 35K imo. It is bloody hard work and I have so much respect for those who have stayed working in it.

I am in management now (care homes) and although it is stressful, the pay I get compared to the pay they get should be a national disgrace. And that is just me being honest.

In your job in finance do you often get threatened and physically assaulted by people who are in the throes of a psychotic episode and are absolutely terrified because they think you are trying to kill them? Do you ever have to ask someone exactly how they plan to kill them selves and ask what has stopped them doing it so far? And by the way you are short staffed and we need one of you to go to another ward.

I love my job. I love that I get to care for people that are in crisis. I try to be the person that I would want caring for me. I didn’t go into it for the money but it would be great to be able to pay my bills, maybe even have a holiday. I also didn’t go into it to go into management, I want to be ‘on the shop floor’ so I guess I can’t complain if I have no desire to become a band 6.

Depends where you work as to whether its worth it. If you work in surgical pre assessment 9-5, no weekends/BH/Xmas, yes 30K a year is lovely. On the other hand if you work in a busy ED/assessment area/acute £1700 take home is slightly less appealing.

@Indella blimey that's shocking! And it's such a shame as there's so many people who aspire to be midwives, yet they're just burning them out and making the job unmanageable. What some posters aren't getting is that £23k is a good wage compared to many, and in some areas; but it's not reflective of the disruptive work pattern, the demands, and the training and skills required to do the job. Compared to a lot of graduate roles (I mean jobs that require a degree, not jobs that some people with degrees do) it's woeful.

I’m a band 5 and I do agree actually that the salary is not that bad. There’s no other job I could do for the hours I do and get paid anywhere near as much.
However I do disagree on the ‘fantastic’ pension comment!! They have totally screwed us over on the pension scheme. Basically if I want to retire earlier than 68, I will lose 40% of my pension. That is my money that I have paid into for years now and I will lose almost half of it. There is no way I will be able to do the demands of this job when I am that age.

The wages are crap when you consider how badly staffed the wards are one nurse can often begin doing the jobs of two nurses and supervising inexperienced bank staff and students they deserve much more if you look at it like that

£24,214.00 a year after pension is take home £1600 a month.

So after the student loan, parking, petrol, food, bills, rent, other debt & childcare, I would say YABVVVU.

GuessWhoColeen

But everyone who works has outgoings like that. Not just nurses.

Anyway on the salary you quote you wouldn’t be paying any student loan payments anyway. Repayment doesn’t kick in until you’re earning £25k.

YABU, nurses save lives and are expected to have the same knowledge as a doctor recently with not nearly as much pay. The degree is ridiculously hard and you have to work 50% of the year for FREE as well as having assignments and exams running alongside.
Honestly the horrific stuff that they have to do and see plus the blame culture is massive. Yes they have recently had a pay rise but that's not nearly as much as they should be getting. You say you work in finance, that's no comparison to what a nurse has to do and the responsibility which comes with it. Now adding all the debt that new nurses are going to be in is crazy.

The level of responsibility does in no way reflect the level of pay.
Many years ago when I was doing my training we were paid time and a 8th for unsocial hours
This was in the days of proper nursing and not fancy dancy degrees

I know everyone has those outgoings
18995168a but OP seems to think they also have a partner that earns £50,000 and plonks that on the table.

Im shocked that OP thinks one person on £1600 a month is "doing very well financially"

nurses save lives and are expected to have the same knowledge as a doctor recently with not nearly as much pay.

Ah come on now. Nurses do a difficult job. But are you really saying nurses have the same knowledge as a doctor? What are you basing that on? I know plenty of nurses and doctors and while the doctors respect how much nurses know (and often go to experienced nurses for advice when they’re new to being a doctor!) I don’t know a nurse that would claim they had the same breadth and depth of knowledge as a doctor more than a year or so out of medical school.

I've been qualified 11 years - got offered a band 7 this month

I completed my prescribing and was expected to do this as a band 6 - so I applied (and got) a band 7 in a neighbouring trust

I believe I'm the first of my cohort (at least those who I am in touch with/hear of) to get their 7 as a substantive role

Nurse here, and unsurprisingly yes YABU.
You don't take into account the constant unpaid overtime, working through breaks and lunches, catching up on mandatory training during leave or on days off, and even paying to park at work.
As an example I have been nursing for over ten years, now in the community with a specialist qualification and a Band 6. I bring home about £1300 a month once my childcare and vehicle deductions have gone out. I don't consider that being well paid.

I dont swear on here but for the first time since 2004 I would like to say;
Go fuck yourself OP.