Just a rant from a nurse

[Bestkindaparty]

I know there's a 101 threads about the nursing strike. But I just need an anonymous forum to rant.
I left home at 6am this morning and I'm only just getting home. I need a shower because someone threw their hot coffee over me because I didn't answer their buzzer fast enough and they needed a pillow. I didn't answer it quick enough because I was performing cpr on a child with suspected strep A. 12 hours into my shift without a break because we just don't have the staff.
All week on Facebook tiktok and other social media all I've seen is how disgusting us nurses are. How people will die because of the strikes all because we want more money.
Yes we want to paid fairly. We do not get paid enough for the training we do. 2300 hours of unpaid work and then other 3000 hours of uni. Plus all the responsibilities we have. Some people think we're just doctors assistants but its not like that anymore. But the main reason is we're tired of fearing for our pins (that we pay a yearly fee for) we're tired of not being able to care for people the way we want because there's not enough staff. The ratio is supposed to be 1 to 3. I can't remember when I've had less than 8 patients. We want to protect the NHS. We need people to join and to retain current staff who are leaving in droves due to burnout. What happens when there's none of us left?
We had no option but to strike. Nothing else has worked. We want to protect ours and everyone's future. Personally I don't want to cry on every drive to and from work because I'm scared someone will die due to me not being able to give the care they need.
If you've got this far thanks for reading

Progression within nursing is abysmal. Agenda for change made it worse when it abolished D and E grades.
Only a minority of nurses go beyond band 5 or become specialist nurses, advanced nurse practitioners etc The rest of us with years of experience are stuck at top of band 5 with no pay rise unless the government gives us one. At one point we had no band 6 vacancies for 8 years on our unit.

Sending my support and solidarity to you. I'm so sorry you've been pushed to this but 100% understand why you must strike. It sounds like your working conditions have become unsafe and unsustainable.
I totally agree with others who've commented on how the public sector has been decimated. I work as a teacher in a special school. We cannot appoint support staff and our staffing ratios have become totally unsafe. This leads to worsening behaviours and staff/children getting hurt. It's awful explaining to a parent that their child has been punched for the second day in a row (you can't admit it's because there just aren't enough of us on duty). We have children with complex medical needs and mental health issues as well as learning difficulties. The knock-on effect on remaining staff is terrible and I've never seen my colleagues so low and burnt-out. Many of us will be striking in the New Year too. It's heartbreaking but things need to improve!

PFI interest costs NHS Trusts billions. Tony Blair didn't think it through at all. Then of course there are the extortionate procurement contracts and endless stupid decisions that waste money. I could write a book but nobody would believe half of it. I started work in a brand new hospital where the lifts were too small to get a trolley into. Another place they ordered new equipment for the lab. Nobody bothered to measure the doorway. They had to send it back and get people in to take half the wall down. A whole new department with only one computer point. That is just a few examples that come to mind.

Oh God; there's always one.
Do you not realise that doctors and nurses have to deal with ill people and sometimes they even die? A nurse or doctor doing their job and recounting what happened today is now emotional blackmail. I expect you think the government is doing a marvellous job and it's all the fault of the nurses, teachers, rail workers, junior doctors, paramedics, unions. And perhaps we can throw in benefit claimants, immigrants, poor people in general too. Oh, and Jeremy Corbyn and the rest of the Labour Party. The list of other people to blame goes on and on.

I'm a doctor and I fully support nursing colleagues.

I support you ❤️

Yanbu. People assume you will be willing to wipe their arse for free as it's your " call

Biomedical NHS Scientist here. I fully support the strike. We too are short staffed in our department and under unbelievable pressure. Twenty odd years I've done my job but tonight I've actually enquired to a private pharmaceutical lab as I don't want to do the job I've trained for and loved for all those years Absolutely dread going to work now due to staff shortage and new working conditions. Very sad.!!.

@Clavinova our consultant (ICU) spent many ours in A/E with a 4 year old child septic with strep A last week. She said it's become more common because of reduced immunity.
It's also common in A/E for multiple emergencies to happen in one day. Cardiac arrests, suicide attempt, sub arachnoids.

"Calling".

orangemelon
Do you not realise that doctors and nurses have to deal with ill people and sometimes they even die? A nurse or doctor doing their job and recounting what happened today is now emotional blackmail.

I am querying the specific example of a child receiving CPR with suspected Strep A today - which is why I asked whether the example was representative or an actual event today?

Made up, or highly distorted. Nobody is getting £3.5k for a standard 8-12 hr shift anywhere in the NHS.

We do pay some of our medical Reg locums over £2k per shift - it is a 48hr shift (8am Saturday to 8am Monday). So about £50 per hour, which is reasonable for a senior doctor with 10-15 years of experience, running a renal dialysis unit and two wards by themselves out of hours (the consultant is on call from home).

The £3.5k shift in the papers is probably a 72hr shift, or a consultant working a 24hr resident shift somewhere like ICU (standard locum rate for a consultant is about £120ph - in comparison, my husband freelances in IT, and his normal day rate for 8 hrs is £600, so about the same).

I remember similar flapping a few years ago when a paper put a FOI request in about the number of trusts “employing junior doctors and nurses on zero-hours contracts”, and how appalling this was. Turned out they meant people registered with the bank. Who probably also had a standard contract with the same trust. Journalists either don’t understand NHS staffing/pay, or choose to misunderstand in pursuit of a good scandal.

I got a 1st for my AHP job which I love but I might have to do something else in the long run to pay the bills.
Stick that in your Daily Mail pipe and smoke it.

The government may claim there is no money for pay rises but if they brought someone in with half a brain cell to examine the finances of the NHS they would find plenty. Less managers, less waste in procurement equals more (well deserved) money for nurses. Everyone I know supports the nurses strike.

I support you guys hundred percent and the tories want the public not to as they don’t want to negotiate with you. About twelve hour shifts I have been a patient loads and I had a conversation with many nurses as I hate the tories and I tell them this any how one nurse older lady type said she’s not a labour fan and told me that it was the nurses at the time that voted to do twelve hour shifts this was years ago is that right? I said I didn’t know this
i said though regardless of doing twelve hours I can’t believe that you only officially get half hour break in that time if you even get that .

The OP has described what happened today.
Obviously, not all nurses or doctors perform cpr on children with Gp A strep on a daily basis. I don't think anyone could handle doing that on a daily basis.

Another nurse here but a burnt out one. I’ve told my daughter to never be a nurse because no matter how hard she works and how much responsibility she takes she’d struggle financially. I feel so bad saying this but it's true.

I support you all the way.

The short staffing was really brought home to me last week when I was in A&E. It was a weekday evening, and it was absolutely heaving. The triage nurse I saw first was lovely and very thorough; she then sent me through to an urgent treatment centre which was slightly less busy, but was staffed by only one doctor and one nurse. They were therefore having to do everything themselves, including stuff that in normal circumstances you would expect to be done by clerks, pharmacists, paramedics and students - including, for instance, wrestling with a problematic printer, showing patients where X ray was, dishing out medication, doing basic dressings, dealing with the very deaf old lady who had no clue why she was there, etc etc. They were absolutely rushed off their feet but were again kind, patient, thorough and very professional - even though the department was getting ever busier. They must have been absolutely shattered by the end of their shift. They earned every penny of what they were paid and thoroughly deserved double.

Get real! Nurses don’t contribute to the economy.

The real money should go to Hedge Fund Managers… they generate money.

Oh, until you get ill….

When I worked in Public Service our jobs were graded by responsibility, yes I did a good job, but was I worth more than a nurse… Probably not!

Nurses, I hate what you are doing, but I support you wholeheartedly.

orangemelon
The OP has described what happened today
Obviously, not all nurses or doctors perform cpr on children with Gp A strep on a daily basis

I would hope it's quite a rare occurrence - hence my query.

If you aren't doing anything to address the government fuckery, then you aren't helping your students in the long run. If lobbying, negotiating, voting don't work, then what's left? If nothing else, at least striking means that the wider public have the issues stuck under their noses.

@Bestkindaparty DH is an A&E nurse. He’s been telling me for a few years that it’s getting worse. Monday he came home and couldn’t even talk to me because the day was too much. He eventually told me that’s it’s a good day if a patient hasn’t died and he still has his PIN. He said he doesn’t feel safe in his own job any more and that the number using the service has gone up and up and up with no change to space (for obvious reasons) but less staff because so many have just reached breaking point and quit. Paramedics are in a similar situation.

The NHS needs good, well trained managers. It is such a huge organisation, a lot of things are simply not joined up.
The IT systems are a case in point, but in spite of spending millions, NHS IT systems are not great and even departments in the same hospital/same trust are not compatible with each other.
I spent some time setting up community hubs for hospital clinics and it was a nightmare because it was impossible to get computerised systems to communicate with each other.
The thing that seemed to work best was to get patients to keep their own paper records and carry them with them. But updating the electronic records is duplication of effort.

I support you nurses for striking,
I realyy hope the greedy MPs see this matters,

I bet they will give themselves a payrise,

You need this increase, they don't,

Ratio 1 to 3 patients per nurse, where I was was up to 7 and 3 of them could be classed as HDU patients, that was in a private hospital , that I left because it was more dangerous than the NHS!

From discussions with my niece who works at a hospital, she said that one of the biggest challenges is a shortage of staff so that less staff are doing more work.

Apologies if this sounds like a stupid question but what are the main reasons in your opinion causing the shortage of staff (salary, Brexit, Covid burnout, management etc etc).

And what (aside from a deserved pay rise) should be done to reverse this staff shortage.