Nurses like me are struggling to cope
I DON’T think the public or politicians realise how bad the reality is for nurses and healthcare professionals and how this impacts on the health of the nation. I am a 47-year-old nurse who has been qualified for 25 years, and am now a deputy sister. The Government scrapped nursing bursaries, so now student nurses have to pay for their training, doing full-time hours on the wards. I wrote to the then Health Secretary about this in 2017, but the response I received was unbelievable. I was told it is better for students to pay up to £45,000 for their own training, covering fees and living expenses. A first-year student nurse told me that out of 130 students, 32 had dropped out in the first year, mainly due to financial issues. These people are our future, and yet so many amazing nurses can’t realistically complete their three-year training or, in some cases, even start it. People talk about the big nursing vacancy figures. Kettering General Hospital, where I work, has recently been lucky enough to recruit 158 nurses from India. But I have just been to a reunion with staff from the London hospital department where I used to work and they are on their knees because of unfilled posts. Hospitals are getting by with agency staff, but those shifts are often not filled. The new Government should consider bringing training back into hospitals, pay the nurses band 1 for the first year, band 2 for the second, band 3 for the third year and band 4 while they wait for their nursing pin. Nursing associates are skilled and important members of the registered team, but they have to be released for training from the ward where they work as a healthcare assistant. Nurses want to give the best care they can, but they are not able to when faced with this staffing crisis. The NHS is slowly being destroyed, picked apart, outsourced and being made to look incompetent so that the health insurance fat cats can move in. But even with private healthcare — and I pray that never comes to pass — you need nurses. And there simply won’t be enough. I have always found the public to be sympathetic and appreciative of nurses. I only hope they can support us and the NHS.
REBECCA PRENDERGAST RN,
Kettering, Northants.
WELL done, Boris! But your most difficult promises to honour is without doubt social care and finding a way to encourage younger people to take up careers in the NHS to fill up the pledge for an extra 50,000 nurses. Go to any hospital where the staff are run ragged. They would welcome radical change, which would also make things better for us all. Unless Boris gives nurses and other health professionals the support they deserve, then I am afraid he could fail miserably in propping up the NHS. Who would really want to start a Saturday night shift in A&E knowing you could be verbally abused or even physically assaulted by people who know its their ‘right’ to be treated?
TONY THOMPSON, Banbury, Oxon.