Why nobody wants to be a nurse.

[Fifi0000]

I just wanted to raise awareness of why we are struggling to train nurses. I'm a third year student and just completed a 8 week placement where I had to drive 1.5 hours each way driving on top of 12.5 hour shifts. I have a disability which long driving has a detrimental impact on my health. I also have caring responsibilities and limited financial support so we effectively pay to train. You also have to do assignments and exams on top.

I got a choice of defer the placement so lose hours (not get my pin on time) or get on with it. I enquired about funding for a hotel which was ignored. Non drivers are regularly being sent 2 hours each way on top of 12.5 hour placements which makes them drop out. When I enquired with this to the university they said nursing requires resilience. Many nursing roles allow you to go part time and I have found a job very close to my house which wouldn't require the insane commuting times. Just after I finished a 8 week placement , I received a snotty email on Sunday night saying an admin mistake made by my assessor could result in me having to redo all the competencies, I have already achieved so years of hard work. At the moment I wanted to scream and say fuck it.

The whole system needs reworking , nurse training is a punitive unrewarding experience and I can understand why so many don't want to go through it. I am already doubting whether I want to do it because I feel beaten down by the training already.

Gosh this is awful. I had no idea.
I trained as AHP in the early 90's. In theory we were sent anywhere in the country for our practical hours, in blocks of a term or half term at a time. But, we were always provided with accommodation or helped to find affordable accommodation and only ever did a 7.5 hour day.
Even a 90 minute commute had accommodation although I chose to drive on that occasion.

We had 5 placements. My closest placement was 20 mins drive, the next was 50 min dive, then 2 hours, the one before last was a 90 minute drive and my final one was 30 minutes. We were contributing for the full 7.5 hours but it wasn't ever frantically busy.

There's no way I'd be able to do the hours and travelling required for nursing. How strange it's so different for AHP training often on the same ward at the same time and same level of qualifications.

It’s not different for AHPs now, exactly the same challenges just shorter shifts.

Any HCP on here, you can make a difference by offering placements. This is literally the key which will enable students to progress through and complete their courses and therefore become part of your team so you have more staff available.

This x 100
Plus
Chronic back issues ( no manual handling back then )
Burn out resulting in a MH break down
Endless hoops to jump through
Ever increasing roles and a tick box culture
I'd actively discourage anyone from taking on this thankless job
I couldn't retire quick enough

Not much better than working for the NHS!

12.5 hr shifts on placement, 3 or 4 in a row, plus travel & sitting exams while on placement, no support from uni were all part my leaving. I feel your pain😥

I would love to do my MH training, currently LD but can't find anywhere that does the conversion course anymore which is pish.

My DD is a student nurse, in year 2.

She is on placement at the moment.
She doesn't drive and uses public transport to get to and from placement.

She can be sent anywhere within the county and she lives in a huge county. So when they post her miles away she had to stay in airbnbs as she couldn't get to and from placement in a day when working 12.5 hour shifts.

To complete her degree she has to do 3500 hours of unpaid work.

She also does bank shifts to top up her income as it's really expensive to rent where her uni is.

I don't know how she does it. She is so tired.

In addition to this the uni term times for nursing are much longer than other degrees.

I am surprised anyone wants to study nursing.

The only positive is that she has been offered 3 permanent jobs for when she is finished as there is such a shortage of nurses right now.

Why though? obviously things like serious illness or bereavement cannot be predicted, but you knew when you started the course that it was 12 hour shifts and placements, yet now you complain and leave?
I was talking to my colleagues at work about some of the stuff on this thread and honestly, I just think it shows the entitlement of the younger generation coming through. When we were students (I am 40) you were grateful for your place and appreciative of the opportunity. We would never have dreamed of complaining about the lack of pay, you accept that’s a part of training. The calibre of students we are getting through from both the unis in my area is awful. arrogant, cocky, little shits, some of them in their first ever placement trying to give clinical advice to staff who’ve been qualified for over 30 years.

I am thankful I have been able to do my nursing through the open uni, it’s part time so I only do part time on placements but still a lot of travelling as nearest big hospital to me is 30 mins away. Once I am finished I intent on hopefully going straight into the community where I already work as a HCA, most contracts are 28 or 30 hours which is perfect for me

I feel your pain @Fifi0000 . It was worse back in the early 2000s, and I've been told that nowadays it is better from a perspective of support for students. They had an obligation to make reasonable adjustments for your disability - that is disgraceful

That said, you are right. Why would anyone want to be a nurse in 2023?

Firstly it is sad but true that you will need a huge amount of resilience to stay in nursing for any length of time. If you are tired as a student you will likely struggle when you are the nurse in charge of a busy ward - with all the accountability that comes with that - or have a huge caseload in the community.

Secondly you have to do the shittest shift patterns unless you are in the community and as a rule most organisations aren't interested in your problems. You are there to do a job and not to moan about it. I've heard many times of nurses being told "you singed up for the job, if you don't like it then leave!" It has gotten better over time, though you must always remember that the needs of the service comes before your personal life. They have you by the pubes in many ways. You sign a generic contract which means you have to work whenever they ask. You can be moved bases (within 1.5 hours from your house) without having to consult you on it. You have do what what is "reasonably" requested.

There is a HUGELY problematic bullying culture in the NHS. It is rife (as someone else said) and you really have to have a face that fits. If a senior person doesn't like you, your life isn't going to be easy. There is also a culture of cover-up - I've seen and heard of some terrible things that have gone on and staff collude with each other to avoid being held accountable.

At the same time I LOVE the NHS.

@BourbonBon "Student nurses should be paid AT LEAST minimum wage whilst on placement for a start. I really resented doing a 13 hour shift for fuck all."

Whilst I do believe students should get paid, lets not pretend students do much more than be a glorified HCA. I don't think you realise how much hassle students are for nurses - particularly if they are crap. It takes time, effort, energy and a lot of diplomacy to deal with a student who isn't performing AND nurses don't get paid extra to mentor students (unlike social workers who get a base rate for mentoring).

Students often get under your feet when you are already super busy. You have to supervise them clinically, give feedback and encouragement etc. I've found it often feels like they are another additional hassle to an already stretched resource.

That said, I love teaching. Though it comes at a price (e.g. doing notes at home to catch up because students take up your time)

Well, for 1 I am older than you, so not a cocky little shit.

Yes we knew about placement hours, but some placements were over 2 hours away, we are treated terribly most of the time by staff who do not want us there & use us to do everything they don't want to do. We were told we would not have exams on placement, they lied & we would miss hours due to these exams we then had to try to make up.
There are a lot of reasons why students leave, often due to folk like yourself assuming the worst about us!

I’m sorry, but thank you. Agree with pp, should be on the job training, with far better pay.

To be honest they always trot that line out about how you need to do all the shifts and work anywhere but realistically you wouldn’t apply for a job miles away or do hours that won’t suit you to some degree so it’s unrealistic

Age does not determine whether you are a little shit.

I’m not assuming the worst of you, and you’ve not really said anything to defend or refute what I’ve said. Yes it’s hard, but you have to just get on with it and it’s not forever. When trained in 2007, I had a toddler and also had to work 20 to 30 hours in a part time job on top of the training/placements to survive and we had assignments and exams during placements. You didn’t hear me whining about the lack of pay or anything else because it’s a right of passage with rewards at this end and coming out the other end with a first let me know I could achieve anything.

The reality is if you can’t hack the training, you won’t be able to hack working in the NHS in 2023, it’s brutal!!! The training does what it’s meant to do which is sift out the people that won’t make it. It’s fine if it’s not for you, but we don’t appreciate the victim complex, making out you are hard done by when millions before you made the best of it.

I won't be joining the NHS and I'm not an adult trainer nurse. This is the problem with some nurses , It should be shit for everyone else because you had it shit. There's no incentive to make things better everyone should suffer. The retention rate is shocking because of these attitudes there's a need for nurses and there won't be many new ones because of the resistance to improve .

I've hacked the training thank you passed with flying colours on last placement and final one to go. Many of the agency nurses sit on their arse for the entire shift and say it's horrible being a student.

I think you are forgetting students actually pay to do their training really. They have become consumers the degree is no longer free , yes you get the grant but it doesn't cover the hours spent on placement where you definitely aren't supernumerary. It's not entitlement when the government charge you to train as a nurse. Bring it back to no tuition fees with bursary and people might feel more grateful.

The fact you have to pay should tell you that we shouldn’t have to pay you. ‘Consumers’ pay they don’t get paid. paying does not excuse you from driving to inconvenient placements or doing assignments during placements (the OPs narcolepsy is a valid exception but otherwise you have to get on with it). You misunderstand me. I never said it was shit when I was training. I said it was hard and necessary for weeding out the people who can’t hack it, which I absolutely believe is right. I’m not coming from a place of resentment or bitterness that it was shit for me it wasn’t. I don’t want a nurse on my ward in a emergency or on a busy day who thought that training was too hard.

You have to have the money in the first place to be able to afford to do this. It can only be reimbursed after the payment for any accommodation has been made, I as a student, didn’t have a bank roll to pay for accommodation so had to commute instead. One 8 week placement was a two-hour, three trains each way and it almost broke me.

Your anecdote about your daughter having a family friend that so happened to live near a placement and made £300 from letting her stay isn’t helpful either. Your daughter was lucky. If we all had family friends living near our placements there wouldn’t be a thread on how difficult it is.

The term times are a huge factor in why it is harder for student nurses to cope, than students of other degrees. Not only do we do full-time hours of placement for a large portion of the year, making it hard to hold down a part-time job, we also only got 3 weeks off in summer. Friends on other degrees got 3 months off during summer where they worked and saved hard for the following year at uni. We couldn’t do that.

@Coffeeandchocs
It's really hard. I don't know how you do it x

You are misunderstanding the average student nurse is older than the average degree course. Many have families and have significant work experience already it's the time it takes up. I have never struggled actually on placement , I worked as a HCA then a senior for a number of years. I've had to wash feed and transfer 15 people by myself as we were short staffed. I wouldn't travel 2 hours there 2 hours back for a job or have to pick up overtime bank shifts on top. There's lots and lots of nursing jobs out there that aren't 2 hours away with horrible staff.

As I said, can’t do it, Then don’t apply! Whether you would accept a job at a distance has no relevance, you weren’t applying for a job, you accepted a place on a course and its terms.

I had a placement that was 8-5 monday to friday, with 2 hours of traveling on public transport either side, as a single parent to 3 kids, meaning i was out 6-7 5 days a week for the placement as my dissertation and final assignment was due the week after it finished, and uni told me to suck it up basically. It was an absolute nightmare. Uni argued id have to do it when i qualified, well, no, when i qualified i went to work at the local hospital 5 minutes from my house, and did 3 12.5 hour shifts a week so i had 4 days with my children. I ended up £75k in debt and my NQN band 5 wage brought home less than my band 2 HCA wage. It was a joke. I absolutely love my job, and career, but people dont understand how hard being a student nurse is, and many who apply drop out.

@Burgoo I can assure you that social workers in most local authorities do not get paid to be a practice educator. I have heard of Social worker's in non-statuatory settings getting paid as the agency pass the fee directly to them and when I trained many years ago there were a few long-arm practice educators who were able to make some money supervising students in settings were there was not a qualified PE . I had one, he usually drove up the M1 after a few bottles of wine the night before and saw about 5 students for supervision and then disappeared. I was older and more experienced, but he was gone after a few 1st years quite rightly complained.

In my LA, you can only progress if you pass PE training and then it is expected you become a PE2- essential to become a senior social worker/advanced practitioner. It maybe that because is which a shortage of social workers at the moment, and many LA's have such dire OFSTED ratings, this is something some authorities are adding to try and retain experienced social workers. As in nursing, there is a huge shortage of placements. I work in an unusually settled team in a large LA with and excellent OFSTED. Despite this the city is struggling to recruit and retain socail workers and several universities in the consortium are looking for placements. We have recently had 4 students in a team of 6 social workers.

As a team we are struggling with someone on long-term leave, someone has just handed in their notice because of burn-out, the area we cover has just been expanded again because other areas of the city are struggling.......Only 2 of us are currently PE's because the rest of the team are newly qualified (so themselves in their assessed year). On top of a caseload which is double every recommended limit following all the reviews over the years, realistically sometimes as a PE2 I turn down having a student. I imagine nursing is the same.