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

Re. Paying more tax to cover nurses wages. Yes, but the Toryoverlords won't allow it.

So nurses, teachers, HCP's are perpetually screwed.

And given the recent long awaited wake up regarding the extortionate cost of nurseries I'm not sure what kind of a pickle were gonna be in.

Oh and other health care systems have lots more staff. Who are better paid.

So if thats the system you want, that involves big pay rises for staff

Yes

but I'm not sure they should be paid a premium for that per se. Nurses have ALWAYS dealt with that.

^^
Ah well. Just keep on as is, eh?

Nurses wipe arses and deal with people dying. Not the same as a desk job let's face it.

I'm a nurse, and my daughter is. We are both going to strike

100% behind the nurses and hcas.

On any higher earner thread we're always told that we have to pay higher earners their very high wages because the jobs are so so stressful and the higher earners work so so hard. (Aye right)

But when it comes to nurses its just part of the job they need to accept?

Hilarious

But whilst doing that overtime can those solicitors, accountants etc, take breaks, have time for a pee, eat? You're comparing apples to oranges.

@Topgub isn't it just?

I don't think that many higher earners have any idea of what nurses do or the stress of the job. Many high earning jobs can be demanding, but actually, it gets easier the higher you go. You delegate more, and life is easier. Ignore the "but my City job is tough" brigade. It's nothing like the stress of providing healthcare to vulnerable people.

According to the analysis for the RCN, international recruitment costs 2.4 times as much as a pay rise of 5% above inflation for a typical nurse.
Currently, each international nurse recruited costs the government £16,900, compared to the £7,100 that it would cost to give a pay rise to a nurse considering leaving the workforce.
The report comes one month after it was announced that health service trusts in England would be given additional funding to recruit nurses from overseas to help with staff shortages.
Under the plans, NHS England is set to pay trusts £7,000 per overseas nurse recruited between 1 January and 31 March 2023.

Add to that the cost of using agency nurses has...

New data released by NHS England reveals the NHS is being forced to pay private firms nearly £1 billion per year.
According to information shared by Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting, the government has forked out a massive £4.3 billion on agency nursing staff in just the last five years.
In a tweet, Mr Streeting said, “taxpayers are paying the price for the Conservatives’ failure to train enough nurses over the past 12 years”.

Now consider the fact that agency staff and mostly international recruits, that come to the NHS with massive costs, see how much they actually earn, leave the NHS and go agency nursing, reduce their contract with NHS to the minimum and supplement with agency nursing, or leave for a different country.

The cost of retaining current nurses, and training them here, is much lower than the current schemes of recruiting internationally.

The NHS would absolutely cease to function without internationally trained nurses, they are absolutely amazing and often have received better training than we have here in all honesty. However, the cost of attempting to solve staffing by recruiting from overseas isn't cost-effective.

Ex nurse here (as of Early this year) and I absolutely will be supporting the strike

i can only speak to my own experiences, but I’m probably not alone.

i qualified four years ago, went straight out into community/district nursing.

immediately working alone, up to 20 visits a day (this may not sound many but consider the complexity of the visits….from complex wound care to managing palliative and end of life patients and their families). The idea that as a band five I wasn’t making clinical decisions, alone, with limited experience to back me up, is a down right lie. yes, advice available over the phone, but the pressure is on to be able to manage the risk yourself.

and if any already complex situations didn’t go to plan, for example a safeguarding concern, expect to be working at home each evening and at the weekend (if you’re not working already) on top of completing any remaining paperwork you didn’t get chance to do during the day. I was regularly working unpaid around an extra four hours a day, and being gaslit by upper managers that it was my time management skills at fault…..but when it’s everyone on the team doing the same that argument somehow doesn’t really work does it

at first, I was pleased to be earning a wage after struggling as a student, but as I took more and more on, learnt more and more, the pay was quite frankly, an insult.

then covid hit. No ppe, no vaccine in sight, all we knew is would be bad. But we carried on, up to 20 visits a day, a massive increase of palliative and end of life care. Unsafe discharges from under pressure hospitals trying to clear beds that we would then have to firefight. Being asked, as somehow the most experienced member on the team to coordinate when the district nurse was off, managing sickness, changing lists around to make sure essential visits aren’t missed, taking on emergency visits myself.

i started having flashbacks, nightmares and panic attacks. So did many others on the team. So they left. And so did I.

now I’m a support worker in a related care industry, any issues beyond my pay grade, I report and that’s it. I do my job, go home and that’s it. All for a quid less an hour than I was on as a nurse.

the old team went from ten fte nurses, to two, replaced by hcas (who are very good, but are not nurses) Yes, two. And that is being repeated up and down the country, and fundamentally patients are at risk.

money isn’t why we do the job, but that isn’t a reason to not pay us what we are worth, in recognition of what is expected of us.

while I’d be very careful about gaining my registration again, and very picky as to what environment, I’m probably not the only one that would return if pay and conditions improved.

so yes, I support the strike and will be at the picket line with my ex colleagues.

Nurses, OT.physio,SALT, HCA, admin,porters etc are all on same pay inadequate scale
There is a lot of stress,and unhappiness amongst staff. NHS is haemorrhaging staff. NZ and Australia are actively recruiting
Junior Doctors are voting regard ballot for industrial action

Are you a higher earner in a job outside of nursing? If not, how do you know? It's quite a sweeping statement you're making. There are many higher earning jobs where it's YOUR head on the block - yes, you are making all the big decisions and deploying staff (is this what you mean by delegating?). But ultimate it's your head on the chopping block if the shit hits the fan. It's you who ends up in court if you make the wrong decision, it's you who has to live with yourself if you made the wrong call and people die.

nb. I'm not a higher earner and never will be, I work in a shitty not-much-higher-than-minimum wage job in education despite having a degree and many years of experience and yes, feel failed by the government day in day out. But I'm not naiive enough to think that life gets easier the higher you go in other professions. Come on.

@MCHammersmutha if you think other professions can set their own hours, work flexibly and chose when to deal with stakeholders you are deluded. I think you will.also find it is far easier for other professions to be dismissed arising from capability ill health or performance, let alone conduct in the context of being rude to a client.

If I were to continually slag off my employer to every stakeholder around me, I would lose my job pretty quickly.

@CurlyhairedAssassin

It's you who ends up in court if you make the wrong decision, it's you who has to live with yourself if you made the wrong call and people die.

Ummmm

This is true of nurses. For around 30k

Support them? I'd go and stand on the picket lines with them.

I had a two-week hospital stay back in the summer and saw the conditions under which they worked. This was on a trauma ward, where they had to witness the extremities of pain humans can suffer on a daily basis and always did it with kindness, compassion, humanity, and a smile on their faces.

They were understaffed, overworked, exhausted, and working ludicrously long shifts. They were also treated life afterthoughts as opposed to other medical professionals, and I'm also aware that bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment, are as rife in that sector as they are in my own. I personally witnessed one instance of it. Imagine doing that in front of patients? What on earth must there be doing when there's no one around to witness it?

They deserve a sight better than they are currently getting and I am with them 100%.

You mean you could kill multiple people at once? One wrong decision in some jobs can mean multiple die.

Apologies for terrible grammar thanks to annoying predictive text!

I am a higher earner outside of nursing. The decisions I take are important, but because I have "status" then I get help, insurance, assistance as well as a pay packet to support me. Nurses do not have that.

A lot of private sector jobs are well paid for nothing like the responsibility of healthcare. Seriously, people are paid big amounts for jobs which are relatively meaningless. Nurses are not in this category, nor are a lot of public servants.

@Emmivee a friend of mine had a virtually identical experience to you working in the community, she quit after just 2 years. Said she felt her PIN was at risk every day with how she was forced to work,
Sorry but not at all surprised to hear what happened to you.

Yes, I support the strike.

What jobs are you referring to @CurlyhairedAssassin that one bad decision could cause multiple deaths?

@RosesAndHellebores lets hope you do your own job with more accuracy than you displayed with the inaccuracies you cited re overtime and weekend payments.

Look, I'm not disagreeing with the strike. I support it. Things need to change. Nurses are under immense pressure. It's no wonder so many leave. I'm your side. But too often on these threads nurses get people's backs up slightly by suggesting that others in other jobs who get paid more have an easy life. Sure, some do. But many don't.