A twit twitters

Steve wrote:


As is watching a good clinical team saving lives.

Brickies serve a three-year apprenticeship and then gain experience before being able to build 'right and fast'. Nurses and AHPs complete a three-year degree course to deliver high quality healthcare. Both occupational groups then go on to develop experience in their respective fields.

If we sacked all the brickies, how long would it take to repopulate that part of the construction industry? It's not just the three years it takes to train a tradesman to craftsman standard, it's also the loss of decades of experience and skill.

Years ago, when I was a charge nurse in an Army operating theatre team, our HR people posted out two of my most experienced ODPs (Operating Department Practitioners), with thirty years' experience between them, and replaced them with two newly-qualified ODPs, yet they still expected the same level of performance and outputs from the team I ran.

If a building firm lost two experienced, craftsman bricklayers and recruited two newly-qualified replacements, would they still be '...doing it right and fast' or would the form of their art suffer?

Most of the nurses I know are not striking because they want more money in their own pockets. They strike because they want to be able to deliver the high quality healthcare they were trained to deliver and they cannot, because of short staffing, lack of resources and time.

Agreed. When I trained, as a student nurse I was a salaried NHS employee. At the time (1989) I even had enough of a salary to get a mortgage on a house.


In the university where I teach, we have had a significant drop-off in applicants for nurse training that can be traced back to the loss of the bursary, but before that to the end of truly 'in-house' training such as I experienced and the farming out of training to the higher education sector.

That not only resulted in a change to the funding formula for nurse training, but also to the way it was managed. We have no dedicated healthcare universities, so healthcare is an add-on to a existing institutions, who insist on treating student nurses (and student ODPs/Paramedics/Physios/Radiographers, etc, etc) as just 'students'...who could be studying for a degree in history, or English, or Science. Just bums on seats...and profitable bums on seats at that. In my university, the School of Health makes up 40% of the students but 60% of the income (which also comes from research and from post-grad students). It's a cash cow for avaricious and ambitious Vice-Chancellors to build their little empires.

In my view it needs to come back in-house and it could be cost-neutral to the treasury. What they have to increase in one column on a spreadsheet they would save in another.

The problem is a lack of political will and the legacy effect of political (Thatcherite) ideology. To my mind, any vocational degree course - i.e. one that is required to practice in any given profession - should be paid for by the prospective employer. So doctors, nurses, AHPs, police etc should be paid for by the state and others, like law, accountancy, professional science, architecture, engineering and all the rest should be paid for by the private companies that need those professionals.

How many soldiers, sailors and airmen do you think we could recruit if they had to pay for their own training and had no guarantee of a job at the end?

So for the nurses, if we want to both retain the experience we already have and increase the workforce, we need to pay them more and redistribute the budget to train them better.


 

Because nurses don't just change beds and hold hands anymore.
Have you recently seen the tech equipment they have to manage?
The government doesn't have the money to support the training of the thousands of nurses who are needed to fill the gaps left by those who aren't there anymore for whatever reason.
Nor does it look forward to putting money into Geriatric nursing, let alone care in the home.
You can pour all the money you can afford into the NHS but it isn't ever enough as people live longer BECAUSE of better health care.
And the use of private care which robs people of everything they have saved is directly opposite of the cradle to grave anthem.
The passage of nearly 80 years has made the NHS an impossibility and either people have to pay far more in NI or redesign the whole system, it will collapse completely.

The technology never stops improving. And every time a new scanner or blood test analysis changes, nurses have to learn how to use and interpret it.
We all hear endless concern about mental health but where are the trained therapists needed to deal with it all?
Twenty years ago there were disease that went untreated because there was no way to do so. Today those who survive would have died back then. Simple blood tests today reveal a huge amount of information that 20 years ago would have gone undetected.
Surgical methods have improved enormously and they require educated skilled nurses to assist.
What nurses know and can do today is often more than doctors knew and did 20 years ago.

IMO is is a profession not only of the highest order but the most selfless dedication and as a taxpayer, I want my taxes to go to people who give so much to the rest of us. There is something wrong with a system in which we all pay into and then lose control of how it is spent as it goes through endless political hoops, kickbacks and crony payoffs.

I merely tried to explain why nurses are deserving of respect and a high salary.