To say the government is right to impose minimum service levels on nurses

[Stackss]

So today the nursing unions have announced they will be withdrawing from A&Es, intensive care units, chemotherapy and other key services. Now, I am not a conservative voter by any means and I do think nurses should get a fair pay rise (although I don’t think 10% is affordable).

However, I don’t think it is acceptable for unions to be putting lives at risk by refusing to provide life-saving care. The armed forces and prison officers are not allowed to strike- I would now support minimum service levels being extended to nurses to prevent the unions doing this.

I suspect I am not the only one and the unions need to be careful not to shoot themselves in the foot.

@Stackss TBF You don't sound like a Tory voter at all lol!

Other countries with min staff levels have a great deal of safe guards in place to ensure strike action is effective and RCN have said that life saving care will continue.. so thats a min service level.

Also, what sanction would have put against nurses who strike regardless of any new law?

But the point you are missing is that staff are leaving and unless this is halted and the NHS becomes an attractive option once again, then the level of service will continue to decline.. which i suspect is what the Govt wants.

On level of pay award.. the Govt found 10.1% to give to 12m pensioners, regardless of wealth, are giving every household regardless of wealth cheaper energy and are now giving £200 to 2m households not on mains gas.... again, regardless of wealth.

... there seems to be plenty of money to give to people more likely to vote Tory.

Do you understand that increasing public sector pay doesn’t directly impact inflation in the way you’ve described?

Increases in private sector pay does as cost is directly passed on to the customer. In the public sector, services are not paid for ‘at the point of service’. Yes we all pay for it through taxation so it then comes down to government choices.

Read about it economically before stating it fuels inflation when it has a minimum effect.

@Discovereads

"Retired" covers a whole variety of circumstances. My dsis, a highly skilled nurse (paediatric intensive care, midwife etc) 'retired' from the NHS as soon as she could access her pension.

She hasn't retired. She works in a health centre for a high end leisure group. Better pay, steady hours, no aggressive violent relatives/patients, use of leisure facilities, free parking. She deals with sprains and strains, sun burn, poorly children.

Yes but nurses retire early to get out the profession and do other jobs. My cleaner is a nurse I worked with who has retired. Earning more per hour than she did and nearly as much as me and I'm a band 7 nurse!

YABU for falling for the Tory propaganda about safety levels.

and YABU for falling for the Tory propaganda about affordability.

I’ve dealt with union pay negotiations and you can find a way through - by recutting pay increases, offering different options etc and yes putting a bit more money on the table.

If this government pays nurses more, it will increase the spending power of a group of people who are lower paid.

It will help tackle the recruitment crisis (won’t solve it though).

It will reduce the reliance on universal credit.

This is why our economy is screwed, because the Tories keeps making short term economically illiterate decisions.

The government has a huge pot of money to play with, it has tax raising powers (not just on individuals but companies too). It should want to make people invest and work in the UK but instead it just keeps applying non economic rationales and we falter over and over again.

I think people need to understand that not all NHS Trusts are supporting the strike;

www.royalfree.nhs.uk/news-media/news/update-on-rcn-strike/

Nurses will demonstrate outside Lincoln County Hospital over pay and staffing. On Thursday, January 19, nurses plan to stand outside the hospital, despite not reaching the threshold to strike. (Lincolnshire Live)

www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/health/reader-reactions-blackpool-victoria-hospital-nurses-are-not-taking-part-in-national-strikes-3918254

www.shropshirestar.com/news/health/2023/01/16/nursing-strikes-taking-place-at-county-health-trusts-this-week/

MPs’ pay should be above the national average, well above in fact. Have a think about why…

Are Band 5 and 6 workers “lower paid?”

The use of NMC registration statistics does not give a clear picture of what is actually happening in terns of working as a nurse.
To maintain your registration you only need to work 450 hours over 3 years.
I have a lot colleagues who have left nursing for other careers. They have maintained their pin by working either the minimum required hours or moving into a non nhs based role. T

How have they “retired early” if they are of the age to retire with the NHS pension? And don’t most people in their fifties/sixties switch to less physically demanding jobs due to ageing?

That same link also says That tells us that the NHS is attempting to operate at 11% under required staffing levels

oh.

Ok, then link me to the evidence. Anecdotes are not robust evidence of staff “haemorrhaging” due to low pay, staffing levels and/or patient quality (the claims of the strikers).

Early retirement means you retire before the official age but can draw down some of your pension early.

I think George Osborne changed that rule. It’s not difficult to understand.

@Discovereads registering with the NMC doesn’t mean all of those nurses are even working in an NHS position.

are you looking at the most recent figures for staffing levels? How do they compare with ten years ago for instance and how would you explain the almost 47k nursing vacancies (September 2022 www.nursingtimes.net/news/workforce/nurse-vacancies-reach-record-high-of-almost-47000-in-england-01-09-2022/)?

Those retiring isn’t a great point to make either, this has been brewing (and warned of) for years because it’s fairly simple maths to look at a work force and deduce that there’s a problem coming well in advance.

I don’t know about you but I tend to trust the medical staff to know what they’re talking about when I seek their services. Why wouldn’t you trust them to assess the problems in their own industry?

the Health Select Committee did a report on NHS staffing last summer here

They concluded The NHS and social care face the greatest workforce crisis in their history, compounded by the absence of a credible government strategy to tackle the situation, say MPs. In the NHS, persistent understaffing poses a serious risk to staff and patient safety in routine and emergency care

Jeremy Hunt, our esteemed Chancellor, was on that Committee.

Yep, being registered with the NMC doesn't mean a nurse is working in the NHS. It's the wrong stat to use.

@Discovereads

Do you have any stats for nurses leaving ward roles for either community or specialised roles?

You do also realise that people can retire earlier than the otherwise would have because of pay and conditions?

You don't see the issue with replacing (or trying to, it's not working) nurses who have left (retiring or other reasons) with lots of years of experience with brand newly qualified nurses?

Senior roles (ward managers, deputy ward managers) are advertised and get no applicants.

I know of a combined assessment unit locally that has 20 WTE vacancies. It has been advertised for months with no applicants.

In previous years you could shortlist from tons of applicants. Now you're lucky to get 1 or 2. Quite often 0

So tbh I'm not really quite sure what your point is?

Most nurses are in nursing for a reason, because they care about the people and the job. They won't want to leave, any who do will be torn by the decision. The fact some stick it out doesn't mean there aren't huge problems.

They are being broken by the govt failure to manage the NHS properly.

89% of staff positions being filled at any one time isn’t haemorrhaging or so low as to cause the kind of complaints I’m seeing. You do expect to have a certain % of vacant positions due to regular turnover…which according to the stats is largely caused by retirement.

Thank you believeitornot you you beat me to it x

Thank you, I am going off to read this now so will be off the thread for a bit.

Being on the nursing register and working for the NHS are not the same thing!

So there has been a problem in the NHS workforce for a while.
Many of us notice this with the difficulty in getting a GP appointment but are led to believe it’s because GPs are being lazy post covid and hiding behind that. When the truth is, GP numbers were a problem before covid.

Unless you use the NHS regularly, you don’t notice low staffing levels but if you look, the clues are there. My kids have had care due to broken bones, etc over the years and I’ve noticed the state of hospitals and the long time sitting in a waiting room. The evidence is there.

People can be incredibly cynical and not want to believe it, and waste time googling to try and argue against what informed people are telling them. Telling them over and over again.

It is why the NHS had to be “protected” during covid - as it had been run down so much so couldn’t cope. And while everyone pretends covid was over - it actually did almost fall over this winter due to the very high covid numbers as covid made people ill (needing time off) and put them in hospital.

So unless these things are fixed, and people stop taking the government’s nonsense, then this will keep happening.

People may choose to retire because they’ve burnt out early, not because they’ve come to the end of an illustrious career….

And it is a failure of workforce planning to not have enough new trainees coming through; instead relying on an older workforce in a difficult and challenging workplace.

The NHS workforce crisis is a real one and has been brewing for years and years.

And finally, the number of vacancies will be driven by how many posts the government chooses to fund.

So if the government decides to cut posts, they’d have fewer vacancies - that wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing!

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