It’s difficult to imagine our healthcare system without Nurses, particularly after the past few years of the COVID-19 pandemic. We all stood on our doorsteps back in 2020 and clapped for the NHS staff on the frontline, putting health and care first, yet so quickly ‘the clap turned to a slap’ and consciousness of the vital work faded. Nursing is an essential service, part of the fabric of healthcare that no one realises they need until suddenly you do.
As a challenge, how much do you think about nursing? I would imagine unless you know someone who is a registered nurse, probably not much. Does the word nurse make you think of someone working on a hospital ward, or do you recognise that nurses are present across all spheres of society, in general practice, prisons, industry, the armed forces, research and academia, schools, local and national government to name just a few.
The previous Health Secretary’s under-developed ‘ABCD’ plan for the NHS didn’t even mention nursing, it doesn’t feature highly on the government agenda or to be honest in policy discussions. There is little understanding across Government and perhaps society of the complex education and skills developed to be an effective nurse, and yet this is the largest profession within the health service, the backbone of the NHS.
The problems within nursing aren’t just something to talk about, they are critical to the health and wellbeing of our nation and our economy and when there are shortages of registered nurses, research directly links this with negative impacts on patient safety. Public health expert Professor Sir Michael Marmot, in 2021 said nursing staff could influence the government to tackle health inequality and that “Nursing staff are the most trusted group of people in Britain, and rightly so.” “From that position of trust, if nurses speak up about food insecurity, housing, decent public services, they will be listened to. As a group, nursing staff can play a very important role in changing society.”
This week the Royal College of Nursing released research by London Economics which found that salaries of NHS Agenda for Change nursing staff have not kept up with inflation over the last decade.
The analysis shows that an experienced nurse’s salary has fallen 20% in real terms since 2010, meaning that nursing staff are effectively working one day a week for free, based on a five-day working week. This reduction, at a time of a cost-of-living crisis, means nursing staff are facing incredible financial hardship and many hospitals have set up food banks to feed their own staff. The very people who can help to tackle health inequality, are themselves impacted by it.
Many Nurses are now being balloted for industrial action, following sustained below inflation pay awards over the past 12 years. Low pay is driving chronic understaffing and it puts patient safety at risk as well as leaving the remaining nursing staff, overworked, underpaid, and undervalued. We should be concerned by the lack of coverage of nursing in Government and as Liberal Democrats, we should be raising the issue, indeed our constitution which states public services of the highest quality, surely demands that we do.
Liberal Democrats passed a motion supporting NHS Staff in March 2021, now we need to be supporting and advocating for nursing and our wider NHS and recognising the expertise and value they bring to healthcare, because we all will need nursing at some point in our lives, and a world with acute nursing shortages and the impact that will cause on us individually and as a society, is a price too high to pay.
* Ellen Nicholson is a Registered Nurse, Borough Councillor in Woking, portfolio holder and member of the executive, directly elected member of the Liberal Democrats Health and Care Association executive, and member of the South East regional board.
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10 Comments
Ellen, most of us are immensely grateful for nurses. It’s very easy for me to say that, because I had a minor operation in 1972 and another in 2022, and in both cases the nurses were exemplary. The current problem is that how on earth are we supposed to decide what a nurse is worth, in monetary terms? My gut feeling is ‘more than the current Tory government thinks you are worth’ but although very likely true, that feeling isn’t based on anything like fact. As happened many years ago (probably before your time, Ellen) the voting public has to decide between competing claims for pay rises. I like nurses more than rail company employees, but that is no basis for a decision.
Thank you for a interesting and important article!
Might our party press for nurses, and other vital workers, to have their pay index linked to those of M Ps?
In the mean time might parliamentarians give 20% of their pay to food banks, as over 25% of our children are permanently underfed?
“Might our party press for nurses, and other vital workers, to have their pay index linked to those of M Ps?”
Or MPs – and even more so government ministers – to have their pay linked to that of ordinary hard-working people…?
Sadly we are not talking about Nurses becuase the whole of the NHS is in meltdown and those working in it are viewed as the one part of the servce that can be relied upon to perform, however badly resourced/supported.
WE need to get the public onside with a Policy that explains that you get what you pay for and the NHS is no different. That means more taxation. There is no other way out especially with the Govt set against immigration.
“how on earth are we supposed to decide what a nurse is worth, in monetary terms?”
One way, which theoretically would be in favour with the Conservatives, would be to look at the work force required and available. If, as at present, there is some 12% shortage, then it would be prudent to increase the salary paid considerably. One could compare other jobs that the existing workers could take with less stress and more money – for example supermarket checkout operators. It’s pretty obvious that the nurses deserve an increase at least back to the real value as it was pre 2010; that’s of course unless you’re trying to defund the NHS so you can privatise more of it.
I checked on the national careers website and nurses pay ranges from £27,055 up to £40,588 according to experience. It is a graduate entry profession. Phlebotomists on the other hand only get paid £18,005 to £24,157, not a graduate entry profession but they do a great job taking blood samples in hospitals etc. Perhaps we should be talking about lower paid health care professionals too as well as nurses.
@David Garlick – “There is no other way out especially with the Govt set against immigration.”
It is the mass importation of labour that has got us into this situation. All we’ve achieved with immigrant hospital workers is to institutionalise low pay and exploitation.
Whilst the Government is being cack-handed, it is doing the right thing by shutting off the quick fix of immigration, what it isn’t doing directly and hence creating space for others is to promote what this means: better pay, better working terms and conditions, but also lower differentials: improving conditions for nurses and related professionals means MP’s and others on higher salaries won’t be so relatively well off.
This however, can be countered by noting that a functional NHS means the better off get to keep more of their money (a Conservative ‘value’), as they aren’t forced into paying for private health insurance and all its restrictions…
@Roland. You can’t support an ageing population without a workforce. I worked in ‘care’ and exactly this situation was predicted 20 years ago. Workers from outside UK have merely postponed the inevitable. The UK doesn’t have a working population of sufficient size to care, to build, to manufacture, to drive. In fact this has befallen Japan in the same way. Poor pay means the care sector is last in line to recruit. Add to that a shortfall in workers and more pay doesn’t solve anything. Promotion just leaves another unfilled post at a lower level. What ever you may want controlled immigration is the only way forward.
public sector pay:
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2022/10/31/the-tories-are-causing-a-potential-exodus-of-public-sector-workers/
@davidgarlick – Don’t in general disagree with you, other than to note the solution adopted these last circa 25 years to the “ageing population” has only made the bubble larger and pushed the ‘crunch’ down the road. (for example, there are more children in school today than there were in the baby boom generation who are supposedly the root of the ageing population problem…).
Also, remember Japan whilst it has an ageing population, did invest heavy in its neighbours, so the growth in SE>Asia has helped to pay Japanese pensions and fund temporary workers. I suspect Japan is more likely to end up with a more balanced population demographic decades before the UK achieves similar…