Nurses Strike -Do you support? What will it look like?

Yes it was & is a vocational job , that is why the pay review body was set up to ensure that fairness was seen on pay & conditions however for years this & previous governments have mostly ignored the recommendations.
Today nurses carry out more complex work including talking about end of life care to families already in distress with care kindness & dignity , a job only previously discussed by Consultants. The list is endless.
As nursing is a people skill you can’t just walk out at home time ,as the person in charge of the ward etc. I have previously worked unpaid overtime to ensure patient safety over my 36.5yrs before I retired in 2015 due to burnout & it was time to look after myself after caring for others in career & family in various parts of the country. So like many not paid & unable to take time back due to lack of staff .
Staffing has been impounded by successive governments of cutting costs in the wrong places ie time & motion studies to justify reducing safe staffing levels , work consultants who come in with a bright idea which works on paper but not in reality/ or has been done before . PPI hospital builds, could go on the list again is endless.

I hope I have been able to give you an insight into reality the pressure that staff including medical & supporting teams teams of porters & domestic staff etc. Everyone have been under since 1990’s enough is enough.

Nursing pay has fallen behind for many years and they have to pay for their training so come out with a huge debt Boris added insult by clap for caters no recognition of the dangerous work they were doing whilst Ministers lined their pocket with POE contracts and have they got the money for faulty contracts I bet no

ginnycomelately

Having nursed for 50 years I sadly cannot condone nurses striking , Since project 2000 nursing has become a degree only profession,What about all the other people who would make good nurses, but don’t want the degree route , Apprenticeship, actually learning under supervision on the wards would surely be really good alternative and supply some really good nurses:
Please do not condone the management structure sadly that takes a third of the NHS budget and even more sadly most are not fit for purpose

So agree with this. No, I’ve never been a nurse, but have thought the same re degree qualifications and the NHS missing out on “natural nurses” who are not academics. The NHS is far too too heavy and PFI hospitals and outsourcing cleaning and catering etc have not helped

We have found ££billions for a pure vanity project called HS2 that will bring minimum benefit to a minority of people in one part of the UK. Scrap it and pay public service workers more. Likewise we found countless millions to bury the Queen - and nobody was yelling ‘how can we afford it in times of austerity’.
We can find the money when we want yo, It’s really about priorities.

I dont understand why some of the ambulance services are striking as well though? Is it just so theyre in support of the nurses?

Yes i support them having more money but such a shame that they have to resort to this- the conservatives are just out for themselves and they know we know that- thats why they wont give us the general election we so badly need.They wont give nurses a decent raise, yet they happily pay their own ex PM's all that cash EVERY YEAR when they leave office- no matter how long theyve held it?- Thats an outdated idea in the first place- if any 'normal' worker loses or leaves a job then thats it- cash ended! (yes there might be a bit of a pension at end but thats what you earn yourself just while youre in the job) Why would they expect to be paid such a lot just cause it was PM's job? If youre out- youre out! (And i think that needs looking at & changing no matter which party is in office!) The extra cash saved could go towards helping to fund nurses pay,at least a bit.And yes there are too many trusts- when it wasnt 'health trust this & that & the other there wasnt so much being squandered on pay for health trust bigwigs.

Schroedinger's nurse: too important to strike, but not important enough to be paid a decent wage!

After reading some of the comments, I would just repeat what I said earlier - if you don't think they deserve a pay rise, try doing their job! I couldn't, no matter how highly I was paid.

Having nursed for 50 years I sadly cannot condone nurses striking , Since project 2000 nursing has become a degree only profession,What about all the other people who would make good nurses, but don’t want the degree route , Apprenticeship, actually learning under supervision on the wards would surely be really good alternative and supply some really good nurses:
Please do not condone the management structure sadly that takes a third of the NHS budget and even more sadly most are not fit for purpose

I have a stepdaughter who is a nurse, this year her family went on a £10,000 holiday, she went to Paris to buy a designer bag £1500 and owns a £1000 designer coat, her lifestyle is quite lavish, by my standards anyway. Her husband is a train driver and between them they earn over £100,000 per year, so I am not sure if the pay increase should not be fore the younger staff and most definately for care workers.

Ladyleftfieldlover

Wasn’t nursing seen as a vocation so decent salaries were never offered or expected?

Times have changed, it costs a hell of a lot more to live now than when someone came up with that saying. I've been in and out of hospital for the last 35 years and nurses are under far more pressure than they was when I first started going in. Staff shortages largely down to people not wanting to go in to that profession anymore leaves those that are there working stupid hours. They deserve a decent pay rise in my opinion

OOh! - Ladyleftfield to exploit people because they have VOCATIONS is unfair. That could be argued about many professions. People should be paid what they are worth. I think the nurses SHOULD strike because it's the only way people will ever listen to them and maybe the only way to get people out of the mindset that this is a 'vocation' and they can be used and abused. We need these people, we should pay them.

Yes, a thousand times yes, I do support their strike

They need to get the wages of higher management and the agency staff to get it sorted. There's too much money being paid out on them that could go to the front line nursing staff, they work hard and deserve higher wages. They also need places to move the patients who are bed blocking, who are well enough to leave hospital but have nowhere to go for after care.
My doctor sent a referral letter for me to a see a consultant so now I'm worried how long it will be before I get the outpatients appointment as I know it will be those ones that will probably be affected.

Cossy

Absolutely support our wonderful nurses 100% !!

Me too!

When I started working as an RMN in a hospital in the 80's there was 1 manager,when I left there 3 years later there were 5 managers only one clinically trained and one an ex detective. Then the 2 excellent and greatly needed day hospitals were closed down because they couldn't quantify the amount spent
on care. Then I had 30 clients as a CPN and was accountable for their care,a very responsible job. Then just before I left I was working doing assessments and unable to offer most patients a place in the MH service,and even if I could it was just for 6 weeks care!! So over 20 odd years I and my colleagues watched in dismay as the service was run down by stealth... I completely support the nurses but I fear that we may all be privatized soon. Where I live there are already 5 privately owned GP practices... It is so depressing when I think of how very dedicated and skilled all nurses are...

Everyone has a right to a wage that reflects their training and expertise, but I personally do not care for the view that some professions are more important than others.

To me it does not seem right or fair for anyone to decide that a nurse is more important than a teacher, or a librarian less important than either or more important than a dustman.

Society needs all these people.

If nurses in the UK are as badly paid and as grossly overworked as they are here, then it is high time their pay and working conditions were revised.

Last year, when nurses were on strike in Denmark, only cancer treatment, cardiac dept. and other life-threatening conditions were treated as if there was no strike.

Any condition that could wait had to do so, both in hospital wards and in out-patient clinics, so I imagine you can expect much the same.

Sadly many nurses are left with mental health issues, and are getting very little support...https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/mental-health/nursing-times-survey-reveals-state-of-nurses-mental-health-one-year-into-pandemic-31-03-2021/

For goodness sake, there are some misguided remarks on this thread about management costs in the NHS. People clearly believe the media rather than checking the facts out.
www.nhsconfed.org/long-reads/nhs-overmanaged

Why can the money be found to pay agency staff inflated rates yet the pot's empty when it comes to proper and deserved pay rises? Makes no sense to me.

No I don’t, was nursing until a few years ago, and have a family member still nursing, she’s managing fine, and not the lowest paid in the family, she doesn’t agree with a strike either..
it’s always been a caring profession, and people very vulnerable people will suffer and die as a result of this action… it’s very wrong especially when the vulnerable suffer yet again, those who have already suffered enough.
those who strike shouldn’t be in nursing! Let them go work elsewhere to get their high earnings.. Ridiculous!!!

I 100% support them and all the previous comments ! I’m a retired nurse and my daughter is working now and did through Covid very stressful times but not only the wages need to be mentioned . It’s the brutal staff shortages as nurses quit retire early and leave the remaining chronically short staffed on shift making it doubly stressful and unsafe for patients . Critical mistakes can be made when overworked and tired . Better wages hopefully will stop the exodus from the profession and attract new nurses !!

growstuff

I suspect a number of non-urgent ops will be cancelled, if there aren't enough nurses to provide aftercare.

I think it's very shortsighted to dismiss nurses' claims because the NHS's reorganisation plans rely on more nurses taking over roles currently done by doctors.

There are already highly trained nurse practitioners who take on work previously done by doctors. I think that they earn considerably more.
This strike was inevitable. If you expect a nurse to take a degree she will expect a graduate salary to compensate for the extended training, the cost of training and the cost of lost earnings. The old "apprenticeship" type scheme enabled people to earn whilst they learnt and did not saddle them with costs.
I know several nurses who graduated, did their first year in the NHS and then took on work in the private sector. Some do part-time private sector work to subsidise their NHS work, but you can hardly blame them for giving up on the NHS altogether.
I know that not all will agree with me, but I think that some higher level doctors are paid too much, and am convinced that many managers are overpaid too. The money going into the NHS should be more equably distributed.
The other aspect that is not often considered is that of having more staff on the wards who do the totally unskilled work. Surely if they took on more of the basic drudgery of some tasks it would leave free nurses (who are more skilled) to do more advanced work.
You see this in teaching with Teaching Assistants who take on the more mundane aspects in the classroom.

I’m not really one who believes in strikes, but I will say this, there’s far too many chiefs and not enough Indians in the NHS and if they got rid of a lot of the unnecessary bosses who are paid a huge amount, then they should have enough money to pay the nurses what they deserve. I also think the NHS needs a complete overhaul, because I’m sure there’s a lot of wastage.

Gillypaula

Just cut the salaries if the managers and give to the nurses. The nurses really deserve it.

That will make a miniscule difference to nurses salaries, even if you had absolutely no managers at all, including no clinical managers. The answer is to provide more funding, not to pretend that one group of staff is responsible for the ills of the NHS.