Nurses leaving the NHS.

Hi

A very disturbing report.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42653542

I really cannot understand the logic of what we are now doing, which is charging them for their training.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

Can't really blame them, Nathan did a late last night, he again, it's about five times now, had to leap on a man and restrain him from hitting a nurse in A&E. They face violence in the work place daily. The nurse was on her first week in the hospital very shaken up will she stay ? He doesn't think so. Then as you say all that money to train, and they rarely earn enough to buy a house or rent a home for themselves have to live like students in shared rooms etc.

Considering the work they do we don't treat them at all well.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

I agree we should value our nurses more, my son's partner is a paediatric nurse she works in the community with at risk children in just about the worst part of Bradford. She tells me she often feels at risk herself.

She hasn't had a salary increase for 4 years. Who else would do that job with diminishing wages? It's criminal really how we treat them.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

I saw a few days ago that we're trying to recruit medical staff from India, it's worrying that we are taking qualified people from countries that need them themselves with promises of better training and lifestyles.
It sounds like we're being generous but it doesn't seem fair somehow.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

My DIL left the NHS some years ago (at the time of the Blair government in fact so there have been problems for many years) She was a Sister specialising in renal nursing and got sick to the back teeth with the paperwork/too many managers not enough nursing staff/being left all night with one nurse on a busy ward /taking abuse from the general public.

My DIL left hospital nursing and returned to Uni to study as an Occupational Nurse then went on to work for big companies, well paid less stressful though not so fulfilling for a kind caring woman who went into nursing as a vocation.
In her spare time she worked for St Johns Ambulance .
Now she doesn't nurse at all.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

I have at least 6 friends who all went into nursing when we left grammar school. Every single one of them has stayed in nursing and a couple have retired and others are retiring soon.

I hear them talking of the very much longer hours they did back then, the very strict rules, the “nightingale”type wards with about 30 beds, the much more stringent hygiene standards they had to adhere to and the very poor pay and I wonder whether they were made of stronger stuff.

Nursing is now a well paid job and they have Health Care Assistants and cleaners who do many of the jobs that nurses used to have to do.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

I understand what you are saying Flowerpower and I agree that the older generation were made of stronger stuff. I won't go into all the reasons why I agree, but I will say that the younger generation, in all lines of occupation, seem to lack the strength and determination to succeed in their profession.
Sadly the responsibility for this is the the older generation, who taught them to expect good lives, but forgot to mention that getting there means hard work.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

Here in Canada the nurses are extremely well paid but the numbers are going down.

Reason is that they are cutting registered nurses and replacing them with registered nursing assistants working under the supervision of the head nurse.

Those nurses cut are leaving to work in the USA where they are even more well paid and offered incentives to go work there. Living in a Canada/USA border town they work in the USA but live in Canada as it is but a one hour drive for work.

But, and there is always a but, the unknown is what will Trump do with his immigration policy. Will these Canadian nurses be out of a job?

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

A lot of nurses leaving are actually retiring. This is something that should be planned for years in advance and the NHS has failed to do that because the
absolute arrogance of NHS managers and Labour/Tory Govt ministers felt it was ok to denude foreign countries of their trained nurses rather than train our own......because that is cheaper!!!
That said.......we should pay nurses better, although their pay isn't that bad.

Planning for nurses' training has to be done over the long term and we should aim to be self sufficient in nurses. training.

Re: Nurses leaving the NHS.

FP I have older nursing friends too and two family members who trained years ago.
In those days nurses were there to look after the patients not to fill in forms, they had someone else to do that and there was no shortage of all grades of nurses so the patients were well cared for in every way.
Things were more simple then too, not so much technical equipment /range of drugs and equipment to oversee.
Also the public had more respected for nurses they were not subject to the same abuse some receive these days.

I do agree that many people have greater expectations these days and a lot wouldn't tolerate the disciplined working conditions prevalent years ago .