PAT CULLEN
General Secretary of the Royal College of Nursing
THIS feels like a breakthrough moment – not just for nursing, but for our cherished National Health Service and everyone who relies on it.
Thank you to Express readers for your support. After three months of strikes and three weeks of negotiations, we have something on offer from ministers that we believe is worth accepting in a vote. Is it everything that nursing deserves? Absolutely not. It was never going to be. But it is clear progress that I believe our members should take and build upon.
For months and months, nurses were told it was not possible to find a single extra penny for them. Ministers knew that wasn’t true or fair.
They eventually invited us into a room to talk seriously about new money for the current year and one reason why they did this was because they knew the public were fully behind us.
One of the most powerful arguments I felt I had in those negotiation rooms, and for many months before, is that “investing in nursing is investing in patients”.
As well as the pay increase, I would ask nursing staff to look at what we secured for patients too. The talks were tough and we made the best case for nursing and patients alike.
We give the majority of patient care – we are the largest part of the NHS workforce. That’s why the Government’s new commitment to improving staffing levels – to improving care standards – is a significant move forwards.
Too often, there is one nurse looking after 15, 20 and sometimes even more patients. That should never be allowed.
Not one single nurse should have had to take strike action. Each of them did it with a heavy heart, but we meant it when we said it was for patients and the NHS, not just the nursing profession.
There are record numbers of unfilled nurse jobs and investment must not stop with this offer. To address the backlog and waiting lists, the Government needs to make every effort to hire tens of thousands more nurses and give the public the standard of care they deserve.