Western Morning News (Saturday)
On Saturday Nurses need more than love to pay bills
ONE of my first jobs as a junior reporter was to meet a group of nurses at the local hospital who had agreed to be interviewed amid a protest over their pay.
It was more years ago than I want to admit. But you’ll get an idea of the decade if I say the nurses were still wearing those puffy-sleeve dresses and had their hair pinned up under their hats. I was proud of the eventual article, which stated what each of them earned – and why they deserved better recompense for their work. The lowest paid earned in the region of £4,000 – much the same as my then salary as a trainee journalist.
But while I was cutting my teeth covering court, council, inquests, parish council meetings and flower shows, I imagine the training of a young nurse was a lot more arduous and, often, downright grim.
My mother spent all her working life as a nurse. One of my sisters was a trainee nurse and the other at medical school, getting ready to be a GP. So I kind of broke the mould by going into journalism.
To be honest, I’m not good with
blood and needles, but I was also put off by my mother’s despair at the backache she eternally suffered, caused by lifting patients.
While she later spent many happy – and rewarding – years working as a health visitor, surrounded by lovely babies, she had some formidable stories of life as a young nurse.
So I opted for journalism but have specialised as a health reporter and still have a great interest in the pay and conditions of nurses.
What continues to amaze me is that nurses are still terribly paid for a job that is so essential and not that appealing.
The Government has talked a good talk about supporting the NHS through the pandemic and building new hospitals. Boris Johnson himself was full of hyperbole for the nurses who cared for him when he was hospitalised with Covid-19.
But he has gone the same way as previous governments in being too scared to separate nurses and other NHS workers from the rest of the public sector when considering pay increases.
Now he is in a no-win situation where nurses are threatening to strike over a pitiful 1% offer while the rest of the public sector feel even more unappreciated by having their pay frozen completely.
Nowadays the starting salary for most newly-qualified nurses is £24,907, with the RCN calculating that the average salary for a nurse is £33,384. Newly-employed drivers, housekeeping assistants, nursery assistants and domestic support workers in the NHS start on £18,005 per year.
That means the 1% increase amounts to about £3.50 per week for an experienced nurse – even less for other NHS workers.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, along comes yet another former nurse-turned government minister trotting out an age-old chestnut.
Health Minister Nadine Dorries told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that nurses “do their job because they love their job” and she hoped they understood “that we totally appreciate their efforts over the past year”.
Please stop! Obviously a lot of nurses are driven more by vocation than remuneration, but love won’t pay the bills.
Now, more than any other time, it’s just not good enough for nurses to expect low pay because they are good people. The last year hasn’t been about simply working a bit harder than usual.
It’s seen medical staff sacrificing their own personal safety – and that of their family – as they have battled a deadly pandemic. Some have paid the ultimate price and lost their lives.
Governments can promise new hospitals but everyone knows the bricks and mortar of the NHS is not buildings, it is the medical staff.
The UK’s Covid-19 vaccination programme deserves credit – but let’s remember how many volunteers have been called up to staff the centres.
While the Covid pandemic may soon be under control, the virus won’t be going away. We have to learn to live with it. And the NHS needs more than love and volunteers to cope with what’s ahead.
Boris is too scared to separate nurses and NHS workers from the rest of the public sector