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?

the nurse does not get £60. I used to work in an agency. They charge approx 40% on top of the hourly rate a f/t nurse would get in that clinical area. At most, the nurse gets a few quid more, but it's the agancy that is quids in

I agree that retention is at least as much of a problem.

Pay and progression are inadequate but it’s also the way hospitals are run. They aim for ludicrous efficiency rates that aren’t sustainable and it means staff are run off their feet and set up to fail which is incredibly demoralising. For example I know a very experienced senior theatre nurse. Because of the shortage of ICU nurses at her hospital they never know when they go on shift whether they will be able to do the planned surgery lists or not. If ops are cancelled, instead of being able to keep on top of supplies and admin as used to be the case, she can be sent anywhere in the hospital. This means she ends up in some random ward that is understaffed but she can’t do anything useful because she isn’t set up on on their IT system so can’t use the iPads they use for virtually everything, so a highly trained nurse is making beds and bringing cups of tea, - which sounds lovely, but of course she isn’t really helping the other nurses on the ward get through their tasks. Never mind! That ward’s ratios look better, no matter that the extra nurse can’t nurse. Management have solved a paper problem.

Staff shortages are a vicious circle that spirals downwards. Staff are miserable because understaffing means they are overworked and feel they can’t do a good job so they leave … and so it gets worse.

This. I'm a nurse and it's just not a good job. The pay is crap for the level of responsibility and kind of decisions we have to make about people's health. We are more like doctors these days and have to make clinical decisions on our own about a far more medically complex population than before. The hours are long and very hard and the NHS doesn't look after us. You are punished for burning out and the rate of burnout is huge whilst they have so called "employee health and wellbeing" I had a mental health crisis due to PTSD from wrapping bodies in covid and seeing people die from drowning in their own lungs, I was told that during my 6 sessions of work provided counselling that I shouldn't open up too much because we only had 6 sessions. Other problems is bullying is RIFE in nursing. I could go on!

I don't think there was much need for drugs calculations 100 years ago. Some of my colleagues were around in the 80s and 90s when nurses didn't have to give intravenous medications; they were all done by the doctors.

Nurse training seems to have gone full circle, the nursing associate route seems pretty similar to the old state enrolled nurse, with an option to "top up" to being a band 5 nurse.

Semantics. Most on the thread were discussing the cost to do the course. I pointed out that with the bursary, fees were paid, so it was free to student. Never said the course was free

This is the issue, it's not the training, it's the retention. I know two people who've recently trained, one as a nurse, the other a midwife. Neither have done a day's post training nursing.

It's the experience they had during their training that has completely put them off working in the profession.

I think I responded to you in error.. i apologise
My point was, when nursing was not degree, but hospital based, maths a level was required (at least it was in london teaching hospitals), so a level of maths knowledge was essential to get into training.
And essential to do the job, even if you can use a calculator now!

i can assure you that in the 1980s nurses were doing drug calculations for addatives to IV bags, and were calculating drip rates (this was pre machines that automate drug delivery). They not have been inserting the actual cannula, but were very much involved with ensuring that the fluid ran according to prescription and timeframe

Fair enough.

Maths A level though! That's hardcore.

I'm HCA, been on my ward 19 years, so on the highest wage a HCA can be..... £11.16 an hour (band 3) Minimum wage increases far more each year than my wage. Give it another 3 or 4 years and my wage for 22+ years service and experience will be akin to minimum wage.

I also think social care staff are treated appallingly and don't even get a professional qualification. They are paid minimum wage with a huge amount of responsibility and often undertaking tasks which traditionally nurses would do with minimal supervision such as administering insulin or tube feeding.

@CornishGem1975 do you know what nurses actually do these days ?

. Nursing admissions tutor here. This doesn't make sense. Functional skills is widely accepted as a GCSE maths equivalent?

Secure job for life, reasonable salary, pension. There's not many jobs where non academic people can become professionals. The NHS is a ball of shit but so are state schools and social services. Plenty of private alternatives.

The problem with constantly going back to "nursing being a vocation" is it an emotionally loaded statement which is used as an indirect way to justify poor working conditions-put up, or shut up, basically. If nursing is your vocation, you shouldn't care the pay is poor, the hours too long, the expectations unrealistic, the mental strain too much. "But its your vocation!"

Anyone who thinks nursing is not a degree level profession simply does not understand the complexities involved in the job. Our nursing programme covered anatomy & physiology, pharmacology, advanced pharmacology, sociology, ethics, informatics, pathology, clinical decision making, epidemiology, evidence based nursing, microbiology, palliative care, infection control, mental health, emergency medicine and had a dissertation to finish. In addition to practice based assessments and full time placement.

You certainly can't teach kindness and you do have to have a certain set of personal attributes to be a good nurse, but that is not an excuse for justofying crap conditions.

You show me any other job where someone is forced to work 36 hours straight-no sleep-because another registered nurse has not turned up for their shift. It HAPPENS. It happens a lot. And you have no choice but to stay as there is no one to handover to.

WHY do these threads always go down a route of arguing against degrees? Nursing has been a degree profession for many years and modern nursing is a safety critical and highly complex profession. This won’t and can’t change. I also agree this is misogyny as no one ever argues that medicine or AHPs abandon their degrees or put up with being on the lowest pay bands.

Anyway it’s a moot point, getting people through the door is a much smaller issue than retaining them during and after training. Nurses soon learn it’s a horrid, badly paid and poorly treated job and we don’t hold into them. Most ward nurses are very junior especially in cities, as no one wants to do it. We have a ridiculously low hospital bed to population ratio coupled with a record number of nurse vacancies. A toxic combination.

You can of course retain people in miserable and stressful professions by paying them adequately and ensuring they are supported with clear role boundaries. Nursing is none of those things and quite rightly these bright and motivated people decide it’s not worth doing.

Slightly different but I'm an accountant primarily for GP practices and for the last 2 years there has been an incentive for newly qualified doctors to become GPs (£20k cash payable within the first few years (I would need to double check the exact details), I've not seen a single doctor take up the offer. Also as others have said, it's retention that is the issue not training levels.

The rigidity of nursing rotas doesn't help. I was forced into a position where I had to quit. I couldn't make the shifts work. I could have done a Twilight (7pm-3am, or 7pm-6am, say) but they wouldn't take it, despite knowing they are the busy times. Another nurse was not allowed to go part time as a band 7, so had to return as a band 6. Work-life balance is a huge factor in people leaving the profession.

I am a TNA (trainee nursing associate) and I am paid to do the apprenticeship which is 1 uni day a week, 1 PLT day and 1 clinical day. This is a 2 year course. Then we can do an additional 18 months to top up to RN.

I'm paid better than a some actual RNs but that's probably because I'm GP based .

Yes, @Lougle the mix and match as well. First nursing job on a busy renal ward, 3 months qualified and one of my shift rotas was: 30th 730am-330pm, 31st night shift 830pm-730am, 1st 3pm-9pm, 2nd 730am-330am. It was EXPECTED. No one can do this long term.

I can't think of any better job (in theory) than a nurse or care worker. I would love to do it and genuinely enjoy caring for others and feel passionate about advocating for people in their hour of need. That said, I would never work for the NHS in its current state. I'm a single mum with no childcare so I couldn't do the shifts required to be a nurse, and care worker pays absolute pennies. I also couldn't cope with the stress of being spread so thinly that patients suffered as a result of understaffing and budget cuts. If there were better support for nurses and carers, a decent level of pay, and a pleasant environment to work in I'd do it in a heartbeat.

those topics were also covered during non-degree nursing of yore...and as today, there were good and bad nurses
Don't make out nursing is so much more complex. Patients have the same diseases, some have new diseases. Nurses may be more involved in the mdt approach to care, but nursing is nursing.
If you asked patients what they want from a nurse, a degree would barely feature on the list. Care and competence would be high

Thank you to whoever started this thread. I had a tiny fleeting delusional moment earlier this year where I was considering returning to nursing after a long career break but this has just made sure that I will not be returning due to all the stuff discussed in this thread.

I have a lot going on in my personal life, I don't need to add to it.

Nurse training never required 3 A levels as until recently you could start at 17yo. I had 17yos in my cohort who had left school after one year of sixth form.

This would terrify me.