Nurses care too much to just walk out on us
IT’S so sad that even nurses are now balloting over whether to go on strike. As you know, I have stage four kidney cancer, so I spend quite a lot of time within the NHS and the hospital is like my second home.
I don’t say that for sympathy – we all have to put up with things like this and I am currently enjoying my life a lot. I say it because I see at first hand what a great job our doctors and nurses do.
But if nurses are voting to go on strike over pay I would suggest they are probably in the wrong job.
There’s a good reason why nurses have not gone on strike in the 106year history of the Royal College of Nursing. It’s because they are such a caring profession. I would not expect for a moment that the nurses treating me would just walk out of the door, even if they do vote for strike action.
The RCN, like other unions, is just using the excuse of inflation to make totally unrealistic pay claims that the Government can’t possibly meet – 5% above inflation which is currently at about 10%, so that’s 15% – and coordinating action to cause as much chaos as possible.
And before anyone asks, no I couldn’t do the amazing job that nurses do.
More of a problem is the state of the NHS. The basic idea is still a brilliant one – treating everyone who needs it, irrespective of ability to pay – but it isn’t working because those in charge are frightened to criticise the things that are wrong.
If we continue along this path then doctors and nurses will become so frustrated they will continue to leave, pay rise or no pay rise.
We do need to support the doctors and nurses, but not the senior executives with their huge salaries and endless bureaucratic tinkering with an already tottering system.