To be disgusted that nurses may be striking for a 17% pay rise!

[justonemire]

Of course nurses should receive a fair salary and of course they have as much right as anyone else to ask for a pay rise. However to ask for a pay rise that is 5% above the current 12% inflation rate is just ridiculous and never going to be approved.

The average nurses salary is £35.600 and this would equate to a pay rise of £6.150.

Yes nurses do a great job but so do a lot of other key workers in the public sector who have only received 2%

The government simply cannot accept the nurses pay demands because if they do everyone else would go on strike for a similar deal. Where would it end.

Therefore the outcome is that people will not receive the proper level of care we are all paying taxes for. If there are strikes then The NHS will be run as if it is Christmas Day. God help us and our loved ones then.

There will be resulting misdiagnosis and deaths and where will the fault lie? Yes you can blame the government, Putin for invading Ukraine and pushing up food and energy costs, etc but I think we will also all blame the nursing profession too for asking for a completely unrealistic 17% pay rise.

Wow.

I'm a nurse and I've worked for the NHS for 20 years. I work in a very acute speciality with very poorly patients, which is 9 times out of 10 reasonably staffed (because it has to be).

I earn 16.84 an hour for my 20 years experience and expertise. I won't go through what I have to do to earn this grand wage because I don't feel it's necessary to try and justify why we should be paid fairly. I am at the top of my band, where I have been for many years so my pay hasn't and won't change unless I get a job with higher banding (like hens teeth in some areas).

However I consider myself incredibly lucky where I work. If I worked on the wards I would have resigned by now and got a job at the Costa at our hospital (who are much better staffed and appear to have regular breaks and finish on time for not much less pay). The conditions are disgusting and my heart breaks for those nurses on the wards trying to plough through their workload with no end in sight. It is relentless.

Patient safety is compromised everyday because of staff shortages. Recruitment and retainment is very poor for obvious reasons. If we were paid a better wage staff would be more inclined to pick up extra shifts. Better staffing would lead to less burnout, more productivity and better patient safety.

I have voted to strike and I will strike if it gets that far. We deserve better than what we've had the last 10 years and so do our patients.

To the lady who said she had to wait hours for analgesia medication;
We are unable to give any drugs until the prescribed time. Many of these analgesics are very dangerous if given too often and will lead to respiratory decompression and respiratory arrest. Doctors make the decision of how much and when, not nurses.

Then your friends are completely missing the point. The vast majority of people, even those who work in healthcare, are not martyrs. They go to work to pay their bills and if they're in a position where they're so underpaid that they can't afford to keep their household running and are still so overoworked and under-resourced that they go to work every day terrified they're going to kill a patient then of course they should strike! They are like any other workforce. They're worth the amount that people are willing to do the work for. The alternative is that people just keep leaving or opting not to train. This is already happening to a degree and is far more damaging to the NHS. Nobody owes you their blood. If you want good healthcare you have to pay for it. It's vile that anybody thinks otherwise tbh

So do you believe every single nurse is like this? I'm sorry you had this experience, however, it does not feel fair to generalise when nursing is a role that people go into as a vocation.
I don't know much about the systems in France and Germany but how are they retaining staff?

Can we stop with the 'Nursing is a vocation' schtick? That's the reason wages have been kept low for years, it's emotional blackmail.

Nursing is a job like any other job, a job that requires a degree and 3 years of on the job training initially and then a lifetime of continual professional development and keeping up with ongoing changes in practice.

It's no longer nice middle-class ladies voluntarily. working on nightingale wards and mopping dying soldiers' brows out of the goodness of their hearts.

Its a job that many now don't feel worthwhile when you can earn a comparable amount in other fields with a lot less stress, so they are voting with their feet.

Something needs to change because, despite the hospital managers paying themselves 50K-120k + salaries and believing themselves indispensable and worth that figure, they are not, a hospital cannot run without nursing staff but it will be fine without its listening in action, diversity champion, or transformation manager.

You need to look it up. The average nurse is on £33,384 per year which means there are a considerable amount earning a lot more, my nursing friends are on loads more than that. But you need to understand that putting their wages up encourages lots more people to enter into it as a profession and not have to take from other countries especially when the patients can’t understand them.

@CocoFifi is this your third name change now OP or the fourth, I can't keep up?

I dont need to look it up as I have been in the profession for nearly 30 yesrs. There are some nurses earning anive that but many many more earn below £35k and as its now mostly b5 that run each shift on a ward that is poor pay. Hopefully increases wages will encourage more people into the profession.

I'm a nurse and I'm sick of hearing that average salary is over £35 000 I can assure you I don't earn anything like that !!!!

I am not the OP.

@CocoFifi nah, that's exactly what the OP would say

It's interesting the moral judgment on nurses. I think a lot of it is because it dominantly female and caring.

It seems to engage very old fashioned attitudes about women, their pay and their purpose. If it applied to any other profession it would look extremely sexist.

Just shows how little you know then because I am not the OP. I do not need to hide behind other names

@CocoFifi but you are quite judgmental about nurses in a way that suggests they should be more noble that others. Do you apply that other careers?

My understanding is that it's less about the pay than about working conditions which are leading to burnout, overwork, and unreasonable workloads.

I don't want a stressed, burned out, overworked nurse carrying out medical procedures on me, as the risk of errors and poor service will increase!

I mean, I care about the nurses, too, but from a purely selfish standpoint it seems like a no-brainer for this to be improved, so I think YABU.

Applauds.

Partly, but doctors have had the same stick when they have took action which is perceived to be more male dominated (it's actually about 50:50)

I think it's more to do with the nature of the profession. People just expect these professions to take it up the arse because they're a caring profession... and they will to an extent... but they forget that they're also intelligent and pragmatic human beings who can see the bigger picture even if the public can't. Keep slagging them off though by all means everyone. It's obviously all their fault that the NHS is crumbling because they don't want to be dropping dead from overwork and working grueling 14 hour shifts then having to use the foodbank.

I think you and others are being ridiculously naive! The NHS is already struggling to cope as it is. Your blasé attitude beggars belief!

Ah the old "it's a vocation" bollocks. You do realise" "it's a vocation" doesn't cut it when the mortgage doesn't get paid....or do you just expect the mortgage lender to say "oh that's ok we don't expect you to pay the full whack the mere fact you have a "vocation" means bills don't apply to you".?

I think it is some nurses that think they are saints, so deserve more than the average working person. There are many people that make the world go around and all have their place.

@CocoFifi if you're not the OP you're just full of shit. I don't believe you know ANY nurses, let alone plenty of rich ones as you claim

@CocoFifi - the operative word there was "some".

Unfortunately it is not possible to set a national wage rate for "some". That is the choice of the Government.

Your response suggests you put a low value on nurses; but equally you criticize. Even if you are right, how do you retain quality people if conditions are poor?

Well, nurses earn more in Germany and France, with far higher staff, many more beds per capita, more Dr's, more scanners etc etc.

They ve done this, in a mainly tax payer funded system, which has received around 1 to 3% more spent as a % of GDP over the last 20 or 30 years.

As for nurses are disgusted by strike action? that can't be true, they voted overwhelmingly for industrial action, so did you just make that up?

@CocoFifi where did you find that salary of a newly qualified nurse is £30,225. What source is saying such fuckery because I can assure you it is not!

I am beyond fed up of people saying nurses earn 30k + a year. I am the top of band five, like a majority of nurses and still NOT on a salary anywhere like what keeps getting quoted.

Band 6 and band 7s - Your ward managers, matrons etc earn more yes, but these are in the minority compared to your regular band 5 nurse. This misinformation that keeps getting spouted is driving me nuts.

The NHS is running on the goodwill of fatigued professionals who work long stressful non paid hours to keep it afloat.

CocoFiFi

How do you propose solving the recruitment crisis?
Why do you resent graduate nurses being paid £27,000 to do a challenging job?
What is the problem with experienced masters level qualified nurse specialists earning higher salaries to lead a service and provide their expertise?
Equivalently qualified staff in other professions earn far more and have better working conditions.