Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Vital to improve nurses’ wages
It would be very easy to respond emotionally to Mr Anning’s letter last week [‘Dip in nursing standards’, letters January 12]. Apart from saying my feelings are very much on the side of the nurses, especially remembering what they did during the Covid crisis, I will take issue with Mr Anning on his comparison between the public and private sectors.
There are 47,000 unfilled nursing posts in England. In the private sector, if a business faced that sort of shortage it would increase its wage offer - or not be able to function.
It might of course go bankrupt, but I imagine Mr Anning would agree the NHS must not be allowed to go bankrupt. Clearly then if the NHS is to function adequately it must improve its terms and conditions of employment.
This the first time the Royal College of Nursing has organised a strike during the 106 years of its existence.
Nurses have not been known to go on strike because they want more money in their pockets. Of course, a cost-of-living crisis coming after several years of real-terms drops in pay has been a major cause of this change of attitude.
But I am sure it is also about the conditions of work.
You have to care about your patients to be a nurse. Seeing patients waiting many hours to be handed over at A&E, and then being given a bed in a corridor before being seen by a clinician again many hours later must take its toll.
That toll is seen in this unprecedented action, and our shortage of nurses.
Taxes are what we pay to keep essential services running. Certainly we need to sort out any inefficiencies in the NHS. However, just as we should pay for the reasonable costs of what we pay for from the private sector so we should through taxes pay for the reasonable cost of employing sufficient nurses to run our health service properly. Martin Vye
Patrixbourne Road, Bridge
The NHS is the jewel in our crown, and is envied around the world.
In the USA, former President Obama tried to put through Obama Care, but was defeated by right-wingers.
Our NHS developed as the result of two World Wars, the Spanish
Flu, the need for treatment of our service personnel due to physical and mental trauma and the rise in killer diseases like TB and Diptheria due to slum accommodation.
Fast forward to 2023, social housing is often dangerously mouldy and damp. Old diseases like Polio also seem to be on the return.
We need our NHS and need a whole review and change in our housing practices plus an acknowledgement of how the NHS is not only involved in treatment and cure, but disease prevention and health promotion. Deadly diseases like Cholera were defeated by health scientists like John Snow tracing the links back to a water pump in Soho in the Victorian era.
We need our NHS more than ever and do actually pay for it through National Insurance and taxation. We have the current maelstrom of Covid, flu and old diseases rearing their ugly head. I am proud of our NHS and its multiple achievements since its inception in 1948. I am also proud of having been an NHS nurse. Our nurses are striking for a rightful increase in their pay but also for more resources to help their patients.
Tracy Jane Wilton