Do you agree with the nurses strike?

[borderterrierr]

Guardian reporting that the rcn strike has resulted in a yes vote and we'll be striking before Christmas.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/05/nurses-across-uk-vote-to-strike-in-first-ever-national-action?CMP=ShareiOSAppp_Other

Patient's emergency care will be protected but it's a strike vote

No, our rate for extra shifts is paid at the same rate as normal contracted shifts.

Ward nurses often do long days which are typically 07.30 to 20.30 (unpaid break makes this 12 hours) which is more usually no break and leaving at 22.00 minimum recent poles suggest that most nurses work around 10 unpaid hours a week.
Shift patterns might be x3 long days a week with a 4th long day to make up the 1.5 hours a week 'deficit' however yes alot of people work 48 to 60 paid hours or more a week and then the 10 or so I paid.

YES I’m not a nurse, but they’re my colleagues and I support their industrial action. Other professional groups likely to strike too.

Thats a very interesting question. I seriously considered a job in our village shop I worked out that once you'd taken petrol to work and paying to park at work into consideration and the fact that I wouldn't be stressed and better hours; Ive got too old to work 13 hour shifts and no unpaid working from home time which I do at least 7 hours a week or coming in on my day off to attend a pointless meeting that although I would be worse off it would be ok because I would have more of a life.
In the end I've recently taken a band 5 job thats week days only no long shifts, if I was younger and still ambitious I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole but now Im in my twilight working years and just want a quiet life and to reach retirement relatively healthy the job was seriously impacting on my physical health. I take with me nearly 40 years of extensive knowledge and experience in a high pressure environment much if it wont be used in my new post but for my mental and physical health its the best solution. Other colleagues of similar age are looking at doing the same thing. Others have left for other jobs, shop work, a midwife friend works in a local knitting wool shop she says its the best thing she's ever done, she no longer comes home and lays awake night worrying about what happened during the day and what will happen tomorrow, one has set up a dog walking business, another trained in her spare time to be a jeweller and now works for a high end local jeweller making and repairing, one is now a qualified beautician and runs her own business and one has trained to be a driving instructor! Our job makes us adaptable hard working and conscientious, we have to be good at hitting the ground running and of course we have excellent people skills we seem to be in demand. One ex. colleague who now works for the local council said "my manager apologised that the day had been so busy and hoped I was alright" I just wanted to say "you have no idea what busy means!".

Under agenda for change you don't get double pay for any shift, including bank holidays, Sundays and Christmas I'm afraid you are misinformed on this point.

I don't mind people disagreeing with what I think if they views are based on fact. I'm afraid to tell you rightly or wrongly newly qualified band 5 are making clinical decisions, Im not saying they are always making the right ones but as they are frequently now the most senior person on a. ward they have no choice. The problem old stagers like me are simply worn out and are looking alternatives or retiring, I don't want to work 13 hours a day without a break, I'm tired of being abused my patients and relatives, Im tired of unrealistic expectations from those above me and from patients and relatives, Im tired of reading complaints that are totally unjustified e.g. one complained that jer bed was not by the window and therefore didn't have a view, Im tired of sitting at home doing paper work because I don't have time to do it when Im at work, but most of all Im tired of the patients and their families the sort of care that I want them to have that I drive home drained and demoralised and worried that all Ive done is fire fight all day. I worry that didn't have enough time to spend with patient X who had received a life changing diagnosis or support properly my newly qualified colleague who was too a bit too slow to see that the shit was hitting the fan, or spend time with fairly recently qualified nurse who gave a family well meaning but incorrect advise.

😂😂😂😂😂😂

My auntie was a band eight nurse, she now works for Natwest and looks 10 years younger.

There is yes. Pay them what they’re asking for.

To be honest unless you work in nhs you have no idea how hard & stressful it is
nhs benefits from the unpaid goodwill of staff. The Doctors,the nurses, OT, physio, SALT, HCA,porter,phlebotomist, porter etc who all work extra unpaid. We are misrepresented as overpaid, lazy, golden pension etc. The same folk who clapped and drew rainbow & hearts are unaware of the staffing crisis . The platitudes the clapping are empty gestures that don’t fill a fridge.

For the responsibility and stress imo nursing staff are shockingly underpaid

Absolutely yes. This government are arseholes happy to shit on the people of this country so they can rob it blind in my opinion.
As they are refusing to listen to the evidence saying that pay needs to be increased and staffing needs to be improved then there is little option left other than to withhold labour.

I’m loving all these posters who think they understand the stresses of nursing because “they work long hours too” 🙄.

I’m not a nurse but many of my family and friends are and you truly have no fucking idea.

Nurses I salute you and will do all I can to support you. I hold out zero hope that this government will cave because this is all part of their grand sell off plan and you guys are collateral damage 😢.

Thank you 🙏

@miceonabranch of course they will be. They are now and that’s without strikes. It’s appalling

Christ I'm owed about 15 years of back pay if it's double time on Sundays then! I wonder if payroll realises they've been underpaying us all this time! 🤔

I’m a senior NHS nurse qualified for 31 years, I’m an Band 8a Matron, not because I’ve been round a long time but because I’ve done a myriad of additional qualifications and applied for senior roles.

To put my job in context there are only 3 of us in the hospital, the majority of qualified nurses are employed at Band 5, the majority of HCAs are Band 2.

The current recruitment and retention problems are the worst I have ever seen, we have one ward running at 45% of RN posts vacant. We are absolutely reliant on agency staff whose availability and reliability is hit and miss.

Often there are shifts with only 1 of our own permanent nurses on duty and rest agency staff who may never have worked there before. We often only achieve this by moving nurses round from ward to ward to ensure there are not 2 agency nurses on together, there will only be 2 registered nurses on a ward for a night shift.

Anyone who thinks that a newly qualified Band 5 nurse will not be relied upon for clinical decision-making and supervisory skills is just displaying their ignorance.

The number of staff leaving is unsurprising, we are working hard to recruit from abroad but this is complex and not without its problems. Internationally trained nurses may find the starting salary of a Band 5 nurse sound attractive until they experience the cost of living in the UK, we have had more leave than stay.

Senior managers have been looking into how to support staff experiencing hardship but without the ability in increase their salaries.

The recent paltry ‘pay rise’ caused some such as myself to actually experience a pay cut due to the government fuckwits who organised this as we experienced a pension % contribution increase, I thought this just affected people like me on Band 8a so did not worry about it too much until I heard that staff on Band 3 had been similarly affected 😡

Patients will be kept safe during the strike, we shall see to that though some routine appointments may have to be cancelled to accommodate this.

Senior staff will ensure that all areas are safe and if they are I hope I will then join my colleagues on the picket line. I never imagined myself saying such a thing but I never imagined the mess we are currently in.

Without nurses doing extra shifts the nhs would be an even worse state. Overtime is about time and a half or double time for bank Holidays. FYI Sundays are a weekend. Solicitors, civil servants and accountants arent responsible for the lives and wellbeing of patients. Often they can set their own hours, or have flexitime and can control who they speak to and when. Nurses are bombarded from the minute they walk into work it isnt an appointment system. Nothing is controlled.

@MCHammersmutha

That must vary between trusts as absolutely 0 of our shifts are paid at double time. Extra or not. +30% nights and Saturdays, +60% Sundays and bank hols. Nothing at double pay.

😂

@RosesAndHellebores if you do an extra shift you don’t get time and a half. It’s done through the bank. So if you are a top band 5 and do an extra shift you may get less than your normal hourly rate - bank rate is mid point band 5.
You also don’t get double time at the weekends.

You also only get night enhancement for 9.5 hours of a 12-hour night shift in our trust.

I certainly would.

Not just NHS, either, but teachers, social workers, all sorts of public sector jobs have had below-inflation pay rises for years.

No doubt it's been mentioned already, but a teachers strike and early educators strike will be in the pipeline too.

These professions that have always been viewed as 'caring' and 'giving' aka an excuse to pay WOMEN less are due a huge shake up.

And we can no longer hire cheap foreign labour to fill shortages Brexit. Shot ourselves totally in the foot.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I'm sure that pay doesn't match the conditions at the moment. But part of the reason for that is so many wards and other NHS areas don't seem to be fully staffed, or even if they are on paper, it doesn't translate into the staffing levesl that are ACTUALLY needed, given the knock on effect that shortages elsewhere is having on the pressures that hospitals are under eg social services.

But if we increase pay, surely there will be even LESS money to go around and staffing issues will never be fixed. I don't believe that ANY increase in pay will attract more people into the profession if conditions are as bad as nurses say they are. The main issue is the unsafe levels of staffing and the stress levels as far as I can see. If we were to fix those, and ensure that they would get their full breaks, and leave on time etc, would nurses be then happy with the salary? I don't actually think the starting salary for nurses is terrible, on paper, compared with many many other professional jobs, which also demand particular skill sets etc. The fact that graduate salaries generally are no longer enough to buy a house or rent somewhere decent in this day and age is disgusting, but that applies to wider society, not just nurses.

Some people are arguing that they have to witness very upsetting things as a nurse. People should go into nursing with the full knowledge that they are going to have to deal with upsetting and stressful stuff like patients dying, but I'm not sure they should be paid a premium for that per se. Nurses have ALWAYS dealt with that. What should not be happening is nurses having to be with patients who are dying purely as a result of low staffing levels or inadequate resources etc. No-one could argue that that's incredibly stressful and upsetting to be a part of, yet nurses are telling us this is what's happening, so we should listen to them.

The problem is that a fully publicly funded national healthcare system is NEVER going to be properly funded, is it? There just isn't the money available for a population that is ever increasing in age, along with the double whammy of fewer tax payers in the generations to come. If we want to make sure that our most vulnerable people have free healthcare then we are going to have to look at other ways of funding it for those people. It's a political hot potato but a nurses' strike will hopefully mean that it HAS to be looked at seriously now. I don't want a US model but something similar to France is worth looking at.

@CurlyhairedAssassin

but I'm not sure they should be paid a premium for that per se.

Why not?

It's part of the role. Its exactly why saying other graduate roles get x is useless