Treatment of nurses in the NHS is mad

[OverseasNurse]

I'm an overseas nurse and been in the UK for a year and a half now (came just before covid so seen the worst of it) I first want to say that I have respect for what the NHS does and that everyone can access care here. I have the highest respect for my fellow nurses who work tirelessly.

BUT I am shocked by how nurses are treated here! The expectations that we work unpaid overtime regularly (nearly every shift each week), absolute crap staffing ratios, understaffing and shit pay with no advancement for further training or development or skills, plus regular abuse from patients who are angry about service delays that are completely out of our control. I don't know a single nurse on my unit who isn't actively considering leaving the profession. (Compared to my home country where people are stressed by Covid but not considering leaving the work.)

I don't understand how the system can or will continue. We have been at approximately 40% staff level in the last month or so due to pingdemic, covid infections, isolation, etc and our patients have only increased but we literally can't run our service. AIBU to think it will fall apart any day now? Is this part of Tory privatisation plans to just run the NHS into the ground? Has it always been this bad for nurses in the NHS or is this all due to covid?

Qualified in December. On £21k as a band 4 nursing associate. Wish I had bloody stayed as a hca at times.
We are so understaffed we have had patients doing 1:1!
I am already now thinking of leaving. I've worked in the nhs for 16 years. Joke.

Safe staffing targets is what they should have - not necessarily have ideal ratios - but put a minimum for different categories of patients. I think this will highlight it as a problem to govt and public - like the a&e target surgery waiting lists.

We have low doctor to patient ratios compared to other developed countries and I think and low bed to population rates. We can’t just sweep it under the carpet and say ‘community care’ - and then underfund/fail to retain community staff.

GreatAuntEmily does it matter that the public don’t support your strike? I think it does. I absolutely agree with you, of course it is better that the wards are better staffed. But at the end of the day the public don’t want to pay more tax, generally don’t care much about career paths for HCPs and, IME, find it much easier to blame individual staff for issues rather than looking at the systemic problems and the reasons why the NHS struggles.