Im ahp but also balleted to strike.
For me its not about myself getting more money, but my team being able to recruit and retain staff. We simply cant recruit there are hundreds of empty nurse posts with budgets attatched to them that we simply cant fill. My team used to have approximately 12 nurses, we now have 5.
2 of those will retire in the next 5 years, 2 more in the next 10. We have one nurse who isnt over 50. The age itself isnt the issue and its reflected across our admin, ahp, support workers etc that people are retiring far quicker than people are joining the nhs. Looking around my office its difficult to imagine how it will be staffed in 15 years as there simply isnt young people joining
Whilst i would like more money (who wouldnt?!) What is the thing that would most improve my job satisfaction is more staff. We are covering workloads of multiple staff, and its stressful.
I repeatedly put the same add out but no one responds. I cant change the job duties, I cant offer more money. The job is unattractive because the money doesnt pay enough for the stress. Its hard to change the stress levels without more people.
There needs to be improvements in the way that nursing, and health care courses are funded to get those staff trained up and in posts ready for the massive wave of retirement coming (especially in mental health where a specific type of historic pension now comes into play)
We need to attract people to the career, and keep those currently pulling their hair out in it. The way to do that for now, has to be more money.
My hope is that with a fairer wage then staffing will stabalise a bit, people will leave less and then we can get to work on increasing our staffing and attracting new people and making the job less stressful