Nurses and the Health Service
 

I wonder how many of us are under the opinion that all nurses are poorly paid?

(Carefull not to give too much info away here)

I have been seeing a foreign nurse for a few months and she commented about Tax and NI, she is annoyed that she has to pay it without getting any benefit from these deductions.

My head swelled and I went into boasting mode to tell her that in my last job my Tax and NI deductions were approx $1300 (pounds) per month. She said "mine were almost $1700 this month!" That dropped me down to earth with a bump.

What has happened to the poorly paid nurses then?

This person is a very hard worker and works most weekends and often does double shifts, but $1700 for a months Tax and NI is serious money. Her house mate said "oh mine were only around $700 this month because I didn't work any extra" :Yikes:

I know contract nurses can get upto $50 per hour from the health service, but these two are on permanent contracts.

I wonder if this is this the reason that poorly paid nurse headlines are missing from our newspapers these days!

On a side issue, the foreign nurses that I have been mixing with recently say they are needed in this country because so many of the UK nurses are off sick. They say so many of them take the job until they are in a position to go off long term sick. I know the dangers of lifting patients and how hard the job must be, but these foreign nurses somehow seem to be less affected by sickness.

Then again they dont get the same sort of sick pay. :rolleyes:

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

To be honest I can't ever remember seeing a headline referring to nurses as being poorly-paid but I'm sure it was more likely to be 'over-worked'.

As for the pay, I used to go out with a student nurse and she told me that agency nurses can earn around £28 per hour!!

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

I certainly remember headlines many years ago about nurses being poorly paid and they were comparing their wages to police officers. They were saying people were not being attracted to the proffesion because of the poor wages. I am sure there was a lot of fuss about their wages when Maggie Thatcher was in power.

Apparently agency nurses are getting $30-50 an hour these days.

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

My partner is a nurse and showed her this thread....she laughed and said she wished!!

A newly qualified nurse (after 3 years training at uni and then an extra year for a degree) starts off at 17k a year, this goes up to 24k after a number of years. There are no exeptions.... the whole of the NHS works off a grading system so a newly qualified starts off at the first and then works up.

Agency nurses do get paid a lot more cash, generally if you are a highly specialised nurse like someone working in a high dependancy ward and you are asked to travel to do a shift then you will get the big bucks, they do not come up a lot though!

The whole thing about the police officers is that they are trained for 6 months and then get 20 odd grand while nurses only start off at 17k (after 3 years intensive training)

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

i am deffo missing something here , yours and hers deductions are more than i take home and i take home around £1300 / month , i reckon i am in the wrong job :disturbd: :disturbd: :disturbd: :disturbd:

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

Its not something I worry about to be honest.

I spent 7 days in ICU in Feb. plus 3 days on a ward, and I can honestly say, they deserve every penny they get. While they may no longer cry low wages, to be a nurse these days they have to study for a degree. Thats just to be allowed onto a surgical ward. If they want to work in any other ward they need to study for more exams.

Good luck to them, and may they always have full bank accounts I say.

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

I got the same response from a guy I work with, his daughter is a recently qualified nurse and had a great deal of difficulty getting a job.

These nurses are working in a specialised ward in the university hospital, I am not sure what their grades are but she is in charge of the shift.

Another guy I work with confirmed the agency rates because his wife is a sister working in the same hospital, and she has no shortage of work offered.

Would these foreign nurses be on the same pay as permanent employees or would they be treated as agency/contractors? I have no reason to disbelieve what she was saying, she knows that I have no interest in what she earns.

It just lodged in my mind for the broader picture.

And under no circumstances would I say there job does not deserve high pay.

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

Ive asked my partner and she says there is no reason why they would get higher wages......although she believes in London they get higher wages!


Thats out of FEAR mate, noone badmouths nurses in case they end up in hospital
;)

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

fear :disturbd:

No they deserve to be well paid.

I only took an interest because I often look at wages for certain profession and see difficult jobs that are paid peanuts and easier jobs that are very well paid.

Although now advancing in years I have finally come to the conclusion that real money is only made by dealing in Bu*****t, the guys who make the money in the company that I work for are accountants, HR, Purchasing and Quality Control. The people designing, building and testing the gear are well paid but it seems a mockery when compared to some of the other support functions.

Just my general view on wages for different types of jobs.

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

Recently my mother was in hospital for 3 weeks after a heart attack. She told me that the night shift nurses treated the place as if it was daytime....shouting to each other in the corridors, laughing and joking at all hours, wearing shoes that made that annoying "click-clack" noise whenever they walked, if one person in the ward needed medication at say 2am, the nurses wouldn't approach quietly and rouse that person - no, they'd walk in ("click-clack-click-clack") wake that person up using their normal volume, thereby ensuring everyone else in the room woke up too.

Shower of sh*** the lot of them :grind:

I know not all nurses are like this but they really were attrocious. Just like the nurse who kept a canula in my mother's hand for 4 days longer than neccessary and did not change the dressing at all. In fact it wasn't even required - it took my aunt (also a nurse but in California) to remind them that it shouldn't have been there.

Neath Port Talbot General Hospital, D ward....night shift nurses? Bloody shambles.

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

Yep but some of them are pretty!

I think theres good and bad in all, there are hospitals with bad reputations and good ones. Locally the Royal Gwent has a bad reputation and Neville Hall has a much better reputation.

I remember they had a surgeon in Royal Gwent who was the subject of some real horror stories, operating and removing the wrong bits on more than one occassion.

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

Aah! I was going to comment, but was afraid to, for fear of committing some sort of sacrilege. I have visited hospital a lot this year, with father in and out of hospital and wife in for a few days. I definitely get the impression that "overworked" is not an accurate description of the nurses around here. They seemed to spend most of the time sat around the nurses station gabbing and one would venture out from time to time to attend to whatever routine task was timetabled. Interestingly, the male nurses seemed more inclined to have a more continous presence on the wards by chatting to patients and explaining things to visitors.

I have to laugh at TV hospital drama which shows hospital staff running to deal with emergencies! I have never detected the remotest hint of urgency at any time when I have been in a hospital, even in the accident and emergency areas. :rolleyes:

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

you are always going to have different levels of competence etc , tbh i have never had any major problems when i have been in hospital , and if a surgeon is going to drive 100 miles to operate on you at a moments notice like happened to me then i reckon i wasnt wronged :tu:

Re: Nurses and the Health Service
 

Accepted. I have never had any criticism of doctors and consultants in hospitals. It's just this misconception of nurses as low paid, working their fingers to the bone, angels etc. etc. Ok some of them are excellent. However, many of them are not.

Re: Nurses and the Health Service