Aibu to think the nurse crisis could be solved if they had an incentive for people to become nurses

[Starsinyoureyes13]

A student nurse doesn't get paid to study and train on the wards. 37.5 hours and due to lack of nurses they are working alongside nurses wouldn't it be better to pay the trainee nurses and give nurses a payrise rather than NHS squandering money on £60 pound an hour agency staff?

They need fixed shifts.

When DM was a nurse she had 3 set 12 hour shifts she did every week for a decade. That meant childcare was always sorted. Work life balance was better as family time/ time off could be planned for the year ahead.

Nowadays everyone's on constant rota changes. Not only does this cost a fortune someone doing all this needless admin it makes it so hard for nurses who are mums (I imagine higher than the general population) to arrange and pay for childcare. Then there's the psychological stress of the unpredictability of it for the worker, family and kids.

Even for the patients it must be nicer to know when the staff will be on?

I had a bursary as a student. They need to bring them back. Having said that I feel slightly guilty that my own ward is very short but I can't help them out tonight, because I'm booked to
Do agency elsewhere tomorrow.

I agree @ScaryFaces .

It's hard to be able to afford to do a nursing degree when they aren't compensated towards the hours training they do on wards, or towards traveling to placements or the need for accommodation should your placement not be a distance that you can travel daily or have dependents. I knew many trainee nurses and medics and those from low income families struggled because it was difficult to get a regular student job whilst at uni. Not everyone has familes that can afford to subsidise them. Some unis had funds that could be applied for but often not enough to meet demand.

Retention is also a massive problem, pay them enough so they can afford to live, lobby for better work conditions so nurses aren't demoralised and leave the profession.

@CornishGem1975 I couldn't agree with you Kure about it being a vocation and not needing a degree. I did the diploma and having a degree doesn't automatically make you a good nurse!

It's simple if these workers are eseential to our Country functioning (which is true for pretty much all of the public services ) then make it a job thats really attractive. Good wages, good working conditions and you will not only attract applicants but you will keeep staff too.

But how many placement hours do social work students have to work? A quick google search tells me it's 200 days. That equates to about 1500 hours. NMC require st nurses and midwives to complete 2,300 hours!!!

Social work students have all those extra hours to get part time jobs

Really? What is it you do? I’m looking for something that’s going to pay me £4,400 with no responsibilities. I’d love that.

Its still a bursary course in Scotland and it hasn't improved staffing levels.

Recruiting student nurses isn't the problem.

It absolutely does need to be a degree course.

I don't think it needs to be a degree but it should be every other country it's a degree. To practice abroad you need the degree also nursing isn't just making beds and feeding, you are expected to make clinical decisions. Other HCPs like OT , SALT physio have to have degrees. Going back to no degrees would be devaluing the nursing profession.

I understand that nurses will need to have a certain numeracy level but I'm not really sure why that needs to be a maths GCSE? Surely a lot of brag qualification isn't needed?

It needs to be level 2, so either GCSE or FS. Not sure what you mean by brag qualification - typo?

This. I work at a university and recruiting students to healthcare courses is not an issue.

@titchy I've not got a maths in c or above. I've been a nurse for 18 years. It's not been an issue for me. Because you learn what you need to do.

Drug calculations can be quite complicated. And yes functional maths is accepted in lieu of gcse by most if not all universities. Don’t think that’s too much of an ask. I wouldn’t want someone working out drugs dose for my newborn baby who can’t manage to pass functional skills maths.

I'm on university/further education pages there are a lot of children rejected for nursing/midwifery courses despite meeting the qualifications criteria so perhaps the solution is to actually train people when they are keen

But I bet you could pass functional skills.

That’s due to lack of spaces due to placement capacity. You can only have so many students in a ward, etc at a time.

And then once the qualify, they realise how miserable it is to work in the NHS and still leave after a few years 🤷‍♀️

But then you end up totally wasting resources training people who are unsuitable As many others have said, recruitment isn't the issue, retention is.

I presume you never wish to be a patient on a ward? Because there are high quality studies (reported in the lancet) that demonstrate that mortality rates decrease significantly for each degree qualified nurse you have on a ward (as opposed to other pathways to qualification). It's a safety issue.

The thought of having nurses on the wards (giving medicines which have the potential to be fatal) who can't achieve a GCSE in maths is frankly, terrifying

A GCSE in Maths is absolutely nothing like "basic maths skills". It's a sledgehammer to crack a nut. The 11+ maths test would be more appropriate for the basics of numeracy, percentages, etc.

Just out of interest, don't you get the £5000 NHS funding? Also maintenace allowance?

I haven’t got GCSE maths grade c either! I’ve been qualified 20+ years and have had a great career. I do maths and I am far from stupid but I’m of the age that schools didn’t support kids as they do now and frankly no one cared that I hadn’t got maths grade c! I can’t bring myself to go back and do it now, my job is stress enough.

Ridiculously it restricts me from leaving nursing to do a much lower band job.

I get why current school leavers need maths and they are well supported to achieve it but I don’t understand why it is necessary for people like me, pushing 50 who would have no recollection of the content of a GCSE taken 50 years ago anyway. An admission exam would be more sensible imo.

You have to do pharmacology and be prescribing ready by the end of your 3rd year. Nursing education has changed you do need mathematics.

How much does a nurse use Trigonometry, solving simultaneous equations, pythagoras etc in their typical day?