AIBU to think Jeremy Hunt is unfair to put conditions on the nurses pay rise

It was the health care assistants that did the cleaning up, etc, when I was last at the hospital.

Of course there are still people attending to the patients' comforts, they are called health care assistants. I don't know which hospital trust you are writing about Luckygirl but I can tell you that that doesn't happen in my local hospital. All the staff (including student nurses who are on placement) do their best to make sure all the needs are met. Sometimes dealing with very difficult people, who demand toast instantly because they don't like the meal served, even though they have been told other patients haven't yet got their meal, or demand medication and argue if they don't get it.
The health care assistants of course are paid less and the student nurses aren't paid at all, in fact they are paying university fees. I do wonder sometimes why any of them put up with it.

One of the reasons why nurse's need degrees Baggs is because that as well as cleaning up the poo and sick and serving meals etc they are also increasingly doing tasks that would have been done by doctors! Before becoming a midwife my daughter worked in cardiac ICU where I was stunned at the responsibility she had for her £21,000 salary.

When I worked in hospitals there were: State Enrolled Nurses, whose job it was to maintain the patients' comfort (nourished, clean, comforted), State Registered Nurses who dealt with drugs, injections, IV, catheters etc., and a Ward Sister/Charge Nurse who had overall responsibility for patient care.

It worked well. The SENs did not need high expensive levels of training and did a very valuable job that was hugely appreciated by the patients.

The race to make all nurses graduates has not helped things - the jobs that used to be done by the SENs seem to be no-one's responsibility, and in the latter years I had many relatives worried sick that their loved-ones were not getting nourished even, as food was just left by their beds out of reach and no attempt made to ensure they had a way of ingesting the food. These were mainly head-injured people or those who had had strokes.

It really was the good old days cliche - the presence on the wards of folk from private companies with no personal commitment to the hospital just exacerbates the problems - cleaning, feeding etc. are all farmed out now.

When my brother, now retired, was at medical school it was said then that there weren't enough doctors being trained. If that was true then the problem is very long-term and has persisted through several government administrations and probably got worse.

I agree, sodapop. There should be grades of nursing qualifications. The ones who keep people clean and comfortable and make sure they are properly fed and watered do not need to have been to university. They need some training, obviously, but it doesn't need to be academic.

sodapop, I'm not a nurse but my experience of hospitals in recent months tells me we still have nursing assistants and qualified staff.
Our GP practice is being kept afloat by the number of nurse practitioners employed. We can no longer recruit GP's to what has always been an excellent medical practice.

I don't think nurses should give up annual leave to be able to work without a full bladder and being able to have proper breaks, iam. I just said I would if that choice arose. Because I couldn't do the job otherwise.

I suspect quite a lot of nurses can't work with full effectiveness in such bad conditions too. Once in a blue moon is doable but if it hapoens more than once in a blue moon it must reduce work effectiveness, I reckon.

Which, when you think about it, is a daft way to run anything.

We could go back to the days of Nursing Assistants and qualified staff, a two tier system. Nursing is very much more technical now in a lot of areas and needs people able to manage this. Bedside care of patients is never to be under estimated, patients need to be comforted, kept clean , ensure they have enough to eat and drink etc.

Why should nurses give up annual leave to be able to work 'without a full bladder and an empty stomach'?

I'd much rather be given nursing care when I need it - there are a number of less qualified staff on the wards, let's not dismiss the need for training to a decent level because some nurses also offer 'care'.

The argument about how hard nurses work and how the term "Angels" to describe them springs to mind is exactly what M0nica was talking about. It reinforces what she said, that nursing is hard graft.

Not being able to get a cup of tea in a long shift or even go to the loo often enough should be seen as dangerous working conditions. I trust the nursing unions are fighting that. I'd be willing to give up some annual leave to be comfortable (able to work without a full bladder and an empty stomach) during my shift. It shouldn't have got to that stage though.

Do nurses really all need degrees? A lot of nursing is 'care' work. Care workers don't need degrees.

I'm not sure how to word my post but just want to say I'm currently at our local hospital twice a day and when the word "glamour" was used here even in quotes I couldn't believe it. This afternoon a nurse had to attend to a patient who had soiled himself at least twice in one hour and watched nurses run from one bed to another continuously adjusting all types of apparatus, heave beds with patients in from one ward to another, mark up notes, serve afternoon tea and coffee to patients and then do the same over again this evening while settling their patients for the night before their 12hr shift finished. The word "Angels" certainly springs to mind and they deserve any rise they are fighting for!

minesaprosecco/trisher Didn't you see the quote marks? It means the rather silly public attitude to nurses, as 'angels' and all the rest, rather than sheer hard graft it really is.

don't forget sick trisher
I could deal with anything except for sick, hence I never became a nurse. However, some of my family are now nurses, some of the family trained at Guy's in the 1910s and it was considered to be a prestigious and admired profession.

I wonder how many nurses work more than their contracted hours for no extra pay?

MOnica, I can't believe that you used the word 'glamour' as an adjective for nursing! It certainly is not. And the facts that your son is hard working, or that he is on strike, or that anyone in your family has never had more than 4 weeks holiday are totally irrelevant to this thread. So, in answer to the OP, yes, Jeremy Hunt is being unfair - but that's nothing new, is it?! The nurses should NOT be asked to give up any leave in return for a measly 6.5% over three years and it is ridiculous comparing their pay and conditions with any other profession.

M0nica your DS is fortunate that he can exercise his right to withdraw his labour without being pilloried or accused of causing harm to those he cares for. (although I believe there is currently a movement amongst students to request a refund of their fees equivalent to the time lost). Nurses can't do that.
As for a glamorous job when did nursing become that? Dealing with blood, urine and faeces, dressing wounds, helping with operations,is that really glamorous?

I have friends and family who are academics. How nursing could be seen as a more ‘glamourus’ job than academia is beyond me. Workers who strike always make financial losses and lose when their pension is calculated and any strike days discounted.
The issue here is whether as a country we should have pay and conditions that are attractive enough for us to recruit and retain nurses. We don’t.

I have never ever believed that choosing a vocational job or one where salaries are lower is an excuse for paying badly. Everyone should get the fair rate for the job.

My DS is an academic, presently on strike, His job does not have the 'glamour' of nursing, but he commented today that he has been on strike for 14 days and will lose nearly three weeks pay this month but if you add up all the unpaid overtime he has done this year alone, despite the strikes, it exceed the number of hours lost to the strike.

MOnica It is true that people choose the career they do and know what the pay and conditions are. But the point is that at the moment fewer and fewer people are choosing to go into nursing and it is difficult to hang on to those that do.

Some people do have what I suppose could be described as a "vocation" and may be prepared to put up with long hours, increased responsibilities and dwindling pay. However, the majority of people, even those that have a genuine desire to care for others, do have a "breaking point" where they can no longer justify the damage done to their own wellbeing and that of their families in remaining in a job that leaves them exhausted and demoralised.

You were upset about the pay and conditions and the proposed cut in pension that your son, who is a lecturer, is affected by. Would it be reasonable then for someone to say "Well, he wasn't forced to take up that career, he knew what the pay, conditions and prospects were"? In my view it would not be reasonable.

Nurses and other NHS staff are in a similar position to other public service workers - increasing responsibility and workload, pay out of kilter with inflation, and a pension scheme that has already been altered to their detriment.

My daughter is a midwife. She works 13 hour shifts in a unit that is constantly understaffed. At the moment she works in post natal where they are under pressure every shift to get new mum's dischargedn as quickly as possible (sometimes dangerous and no time to help new mum's with breast feeding etc) to make room for those newly delivered. It is a stressful, pressured environment where my daughter can work a full shift without even a cup of tea never mind a proper break. Oh and here in NI she hasn't had a pay rise in 7 years.Every shift she works she has responsibility for not just the mum but her baby. To my mind she needs her leave and could not be paid enough!!!

If we are going back in time maybe we should look at al the greements reached with the miners over the years- or maybe it's just best to stay in the present. Jeremy Hunt is a c--- who has tried many times to turn the public against the NHS and anyone who works for it. He targeted the junior doctors and now he's after the nurses. His ultimate aim is of course the privatisation of those areas of the NHS his friends can make money on. And of course it's not right. Nurses are stretched to their limits and deserve a pay rise. More and more are turning to agency work for the fexibility and the pay and really you can't blame them.

I missed Jalima's post. Now I have read it, I think nurses have a very generous leave entitlement. DH and DD have never had more than 4 weeks leave, neither did I except when I worked for a Public Utility. It seems a reasonable quid pro quo

It must be a long time ago as the national legal minimum annual leave in the UK is 5.6 weeks - it includes paid bankholidays

I think Hunt is being very mean in his bean counting as most nurses I know cannot guarantee being able to get their statutory meal breaks and struggle to go to the toilet.

But then again MP's have received pay rises of over 16% under "austerity" without parliament sitting extra days and reducing the 80+ days a year that they do not attend parliament.

£2000 pay rise 30 years ago was quite substantial, though.
I was in the other union and voted against it. The new contract said that you could work any hours the head saw fit. The head I worked for at the time would have had us sleeping at the school if he could have done.

In 1987 the National Union of Teachers teachers agreed to lose a week's holiday (which was used as separate Training Days, still in force) in return for a pay rise of £2000, plus the introduction of Directed Hours and a whole raft of changes.
I am aware that teachers still have generous holiday entitlement, but they all work considerably longer hours than they used to and pay £9000 for their training.
I am not comparing, just commenting.

Hope you don't have to go into hospital soon, Monica, and rely on those overworked underpaid nurses.

When you said you never got more than 28 days holiday, that did not include 8 days for bank holidays, did it?