NHS Pay award

[Thedogscollar]

So this is what they have come back with from the insulting 1% offer by increasing it to a paltry 3%.
Workers are leaving in their droves we have a massive deficit in nursing and midwifery which is worsening daily.

I work in the South East of England, we are hugely affected with shortages in staffing, virtually every 12.5 hrs shift I do we cannot have a break due to work acuity and lack of staff. We have junior staff in tears with the pressure put upon them.
We aren't paid for our break and we are hard pushed to get it back as time owing. We cover empty shifts on the bank over and above our contracted hours as we know how hard it is for our colleagues in there.
We are all reaching breaking point some are there now and gone off sick. It is exhausting physically but more so mentally as you know before you even get to work what it's going to be like.

I have payslips going back 10 plus years and in that time my salary has barely changed and I am at the top of my band.

Our management team held an urgent meeting the other day to discuss the crisis going on within our trust with staffing and work acuity. Nothing was really dealt with just more management speak.

This government has to look after the NHS staff that have given so much and still are. Staff retention is in crisis and by offering this paltry pay rise they are doing nothing to stop this disaster becoming a momentous catastrophe resulting in even worsening patient safety levels being eroded even more.

How on earth can this government justify 30 plus billions for track n trace and HSS yet not offer a decent pay rise to NHS workers and in that I include care workers too.

Boris and co should hang their heads in shame but as per they think they are doing so well in offering us anything.

I'm sure I will have people coming on now to say they have lost jobs and taken paycuts and for that I am truly sorry but this cannot be used as an arguement for a huge group of essential workers being financially and emotionally abused by their employer which is exactly what this government are doing.

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow I can't find the official survey but the first few google searches all implied the same -

practiceindex.co.uk/gp/blog/covid-is-changing-recruitment-habits-and-patterns/

The last time I looked, the age profile and early retirement/burnout of GPs looks like it will worsen in the short to medium term. Here, we have confirmed plans for early retirement, emigration and career change for partners and can't recruit new partners and salaried.

@Blossomtoes sorry to hear that but am not surprised. One of the PNs we eventually recruited was a critical care nurse who hadn't worked in primary. Let's hope your DSD recharges her batteries in putpatients where presumably the working conditions and absence of shifts will help.

I think it’s for the best for now @Zilla1. Last year was absolutely brutal for her - despite being branded as hyperbole - and she was on her knees. Hopefully a quiet year or two will put the fire back in her belly. It’s sad because she was so passionate.

[quote Zilla1]@ThinkAboutItTomorrow I can't find the official survey but the first few google searches all implied the same -

practiceindex.co.uk/gp/blog/covid-is-changing-recruitment-habits-and-patterns/

The last time I looked, the age profile and early retirement/burnout of GPs looks like it will worsen in the short to medium term. Here, we have confirmed plans for early retirement, emigration and career change for partners and can't recruit new partners and salaried.

@Blossomtoes sorry to hear that but am not surprised. One of the PNs we eventually recruited was a critical care nurse who hadn't worked in primary. Let's hope your DSD recharges her batteries in putpatients where presumably the working conditions and absence of shifts will help.[/quote]
I'm looking at this

files.digital.nhs.uk/25/798554/NHS%20Workforce%20Statistics%2C%20March%202018%20Organisation%20-%20Excel%20tables.xlsx

Not sure the link works. It looks like the official nhs data or am I looking at something else?

@NotPersephone I certainly hope your consultant partner isn’t throwing the attitudes you claim are his on this thread around his colleagues at work!

I don’t know a single consultant who’s not absolutely enraged about the pay scale for their other colleagues…

@Blossomtoes I am your (step?) daughter is ok and gets the support she needs over the coming months.

And on a thread where my husband was (at best) suspected of being a narc.

Sigh. You seem intent on making that particular comment about your husband. I was giving a different perspective on the suggestion that having the title "consultant" within the NHS equates to being seen as "royalty". Perhaps by those higher up the ladder, yes, but the clinical teams who work on the pay bands below a consultant? Not always. Often (I'll repeat for the sake of clarity) in my own experience of working within mental health trusts with consultant psychiatrists, they can be the hardest to work collaboratively with, and therefore are sometimes regarded as anything but royalty by their lesser paid colleagues.

I hope that makes it quite clear (again) that I was not personally implying that your husband is a narcissist.

I also think staff should be properly remunerated BUT we disagree as to whether current remuneration and/or proposed increase is sufficient
And if that's all you'd said, there would be no arguments. Sadly, instead you had to post derogatory comments and imply that they had it better than others.

As for your statement that many can earn more through extra shifts, many don't have the energy to take on more shifts. Many don't want to but feel obliged. It's not free money for doing the same hours!

[quote Jellypisher]@Blossomtoes I am your (step?) daughter is ok and gets the support she needs over the coming months.[/quote]
Thank you. I think living at a slower pace at least for a bit will do her good.

Let's not forget the clapping the country did for us NHS staff! We seem to forget how that pays the bills and makes our jobs less demanding and understaffed.
🙄🙄

@ThinkAboutItTomorrow

I'm probably wrong but the spreadsheet that loads for me from that link seems to have sheets that show absolute rather than adequacy of headcount at various locations. Am I misreading it?

I'm a student midwife, I work full time in the NHS while I'm on placement for £0, we don't get paid. I pay £9,250 per year university fees for the privilege. By the end of my course I will be well over 60k in debt. When I qualify I will be earning just £24,907 and will have the lives of 2 people in my hands every single shift. If I have a bad day and miss something seemingly insignificant, a mother and a baby could die. It scares the life out of me.

There's no staff. At my last shift I didn't even have a midwife to work with, and ended up working well beyond my scope of practice and level of experience. I had to deliver a baby and start neonatal resus alone, as a student! That's unheard of. I'm now absolutely terrified about going back because I don't want it to happen again. Many of my fellow students have ptsd from the things they have seen and done.

I have had to report what happened, which will probably get midwives into trouble, which is the last thing we need. They are doing their best, but that lack of supervision due to low staffing is very dangerous and cannot happen again.

We're sinking and it's scary. I don't think people can understand what it's really like until they've seen it and experienced it.

My auntie is a staff nurse in ICU. She almost died of Covid as a patient in her own unit last year.

3% is an insult.

Sorry - I think I actually just needed to get that off my chest. Maybe shouldn't have given all that info but I hope it gets the message across.

They deserve to be paid for the work they do.

Thank you imastmw for saying how it is.

I'm a very experienced hcp. It takes years to accrue the knowledge I and similar staff have.
It doesn't matter how many keen people are recruited, and yes, numbers are up for health care courses. The NHS needs it's backbone of staff like me to support less experienced colleagues and help them grow.
Retention is a massive issue at present. Attitudes like some demonstrated here are completely out of touch.

This thread is fucking depressing - I cannot read it all.

I’m in full support of a decent pay rise for HCP (and teachers, social workers, prison guards, police etc), I rather my taxes go to their salaries and not tax havens via transfer of public funds into private hands.

The thought of a strike scares me but you won’t lose my goodwill. I want pay and conditions to be such that if me or mine get ill, hurt etc that we get a decent service.

This divide and conquer is just abysmal. Conditions in some parts of the private sector are perfectly fine, why not compare a HCP to a CEO (who earns x50+ the lowest paid worker), instead of a supermarket worker.

If you are private sector can you not join ACAS? Or start a union. Anything to push back. Or as so many have said to the HCP retrain and get a higher paid private sector job.

Sorry for the length but I’ll sign off by thanking all the committed public workers doing so under poor conditions.

Signed a higher rate (just), private sector tax payer.

And regarding strike/goodwill, soon after the claps no one gave a fuck about you all anyway so what do you have to lose?

I remember consultants and surgeons doing all sorts to cover for the striking junior doctors and good on them.

I hate HATE to say it but we need a general strike. People are dying, being undereducated and all sorts due to a lack of public resourcing under a govt that’s pissing money into private hands. You think all that 37b Serco cash is all paying decent wages for decent work? Like fuck it is.

People like to hate on tube drivers being paid well, but IMO if everyone else fought as hard and had as good a union that level of pay would be standard.

People complain the country cannot afford it - those pay increases will likely circulate in the economy.
Look at Phillip Green and his ilk, their ‘pay’ made on the back of low paid workers gets spent or hoarded outside the U.K, with little tax paid back.

But oh yes, let’s deny HCP, teachers decent a fair pay (which really is a catch up and not a rise) because we cannot afford it, and others don’t get it.

@NotPersephone

He is NHS royalty - and I notice there’s no disagreement about the quarter of a million annual income. I seem to remember four houses were mentioned at one point too.

Well of course there’s no sodding disagreement - I wrote it! You’re proving my point, though - i.e. higher paid staff don’t need more. The problem is that so many NHS staff don’t seem to think they’re well-paid even when their terms are (relatively) generous.

do you work? just wondered what your job is as you have lots of opinions re health care workers but dont seem to indicate you work in any field.

@Tw1rlz

Nursing applications rose by over a third in Feb. Medicine degrees are massively oversubscribed this year.

Never has there been a more urgent need to understand driving forces and motivating factors for the exodus from the UK’s medical training programmes. In 2018, only 37.7% of F2’s continued into run through training programmes. (from a BMJ article in 2020).

@ChainJane

3% seems pretty generous to me considering many people in the private sector are getting nothing at all. The BBC report I read said the average nurse would be getting an extra thousand a month because of it.

NHS staff are in the fortunate position that their jobs are never going to be made redundant, a comfort few employees have these days.

An extra thousand a month! That would mean having a very large salary to start with.

I'll get an extra £66 take home pay per month. Thats full time hours at the top band 6.

That’s a lot and pretty generous. Most other sectors will get nothing.

@Tw1rlz

That’s a lot and pretty generous. Most other sectors will get nothing.

£66 a month isn't a lot. And if your sector us getting nothing (whilst your CEO gets a big pay rise) than thats no ones fault but your own.

Stop dragging nurses etc down to the lowest common denominator.

The whole banding and pay structure needs to be reviewed. Experienced nurses fed up being stuck at the top of Band 5 no matter how many courses they do unless they move into management. Totally humiliating that newly qualified nurses are also Band 5.
No staff ever available to cover maternity/long term sick so absolutely no staff available for A/L or acute illness not to mention the present Covid crisis.
Management do not prioritise care for their staff and just demand everyone does extra to cover the gaps which staff do out of a sense of duty and guilt!
Patients deserve a much better service, really scared for the future without a complete overhaul!