A poem in support of striking NHS workers, by Michael Rosen

This is where some of the NHS money goes. Up to £1800 per day for some agency nurses. No wonder NHS staff feel aggrieved.

"Reliance on agencies – at a cost of up to £1,800 per day per nurse – comes as the number of nurse training places in England has been cut. In the last year of the Labour government, 20,829 nurse training positions were filled in England. That fell to 17,741 in 2011-12 and to 17,219 in 2012-13, rising to 18,009 in 2013-14.

According to the latest figures, there were 7,000 fewer qualified nurses in August 2013 compared with May 2010, excluding health visitors, school nurses and midwives. Ministers were accused on Saturday of “truly incompetent planning” by the Royal College of Nurses."

From today's Observer.

Some companies are giving their staff a payrise on Monday, up to the living wage. Hurray for that.

www.theguardian.com/society/2014/nov/01/pay-rise-workers-living-wage-rate

Nursery fees in London - and I guess a lot of the bigger cities - are astronomical, and the subsidies don't make much of a dent in them. My own feeling is that subsidies are often seen as an opportunity to gradually raise prices - I believe that is what happened in Australia and it seems to have happened here too.

Since the majority of couples have at least one child, it is inevitable - and I think reasonable - that people want their earnings (especially as both parents work in at least 50% of families) to be sufficient to provide for their children.

Child tax credits would be available for a single parent on £39,000 p.a. so nursery fees would be subsidised.

Wage levels can't be dictated by the incidental costs of having a family.

£39,000 sounds a lot, but I doubt it would go very far in London. DD checked out the nursery provided by the university she works in and found that it would cost around £13,000 a year to leave her toddler there. Prices like that would make a hole in £39,000.

We really are going to reach a point where essential services are going to be unsustainable in big cities, because low paid workers will have been priced out of the surrounding area.

Despite the alleged fantastic salaries of nurses and midwives, there are alarming reports of a severe difficulties in attracting and retaining nurses.

Senior officers in the financial and business sectors say that their huge salaries are necessary to attract the "right" candidates and to prevent them from taking their alleged talents elsewhere.

This reasoning does not seem to be applied to those working in our essential public services. When they are denied a pay rise or offered an amount that in no way reflects current price increases, we are told that is because there is no surplus money available and it is irresponsible to expect more because the country is in debt.

I suppose some people would then say "Oh but that's different - the public services are paid for out of taxpayers' money". But if the NHS (or any other public service) did not exist, there would still be a need for health care, and the only alternative would be through private insurance schemes. The NHS is a national asset that benefits the individual and the country as a whole in that it provides treatment for everybody without financially penalising, through increased premiums, those that have a higher risk of illness.

And whilst governments point to the cost to the taxpayer of public services, they seem to overlook the vast cost to the taxpayer of paying off the enormous debts incurred by our finance industry or to their failure to draw up effective measures to curb their greed and amoral practices.

The NHS has recently been found to be the most efficient and cost-effective in the western world and I think the people that work in it are being very shabbily treated.

Policemen have had their pay frozen for 2 years , and lots of other people would like to earn what midwives earn.They have had 3% already [midwives] but want the extra 1%. Not on.Poems or no poems.

There is a need to rethink the whole nursing situation. Successive governments have insisted on moving towards a degree qualification for nurses, and, quite reasonably, they then as graduates feel they should command higher pay. But is this really what we need?

I have just spent 5 days in hospital and my thought would be that we need to keep a level of fully trained professionals, but we also need to bring back the role of the state enrolled nurse; less training, lower pay and a more balanced workforce to deliver humane and loving care.

I felt that humanity had been trained out of the nurses - it is obviously very important that the professional skills to ensure patient safety are in place - correct drug administration and observations with proper record-keeping alongside that. But the form-filling and the slick professionalism really does seem to have edged out the care element. As just one example I spent one dreadful night with heartburn and oesophogeal spasm caused by the painkillers I had been given (this on top of the existing post-op pain). I rang the bell and half an hour later was given some gaviscon (which did not help at all). No-one made the smallest sympathetic noise, or indeed came back to see how I was or if there was anything further that might be done - I just sat there in agony all night. Fell asleep at 7.15 am and was woken for obs at 8 am!!!

I also had one day of acute and intractable pain - and the nurses are now required to institute patient choice - this meant that they kept asking me "Would you like some X or some Y?" Had I had the faintest clue what X and Y were and what their potential side-effects might be, I could have given an answer, but as it was I just wanted someone to stop the pain! This sort of professional protocol is pure window dressing.

This truly would not have happened in the NHS that I joined as a SW in 1970 - patient comfort and care was the top priority and we all pulled together in our different roles to achieve this.

Bring back caring! - a balanced workforce that is therefore more affordable is what is needed.

I do not understand your two wrongs do not make a right statement, gillybob.
What are the wrongs and what is the right?
Are you saying that NHS staff are wrong to want 1% which they have been offered by the pay review body?

The 1% have their very own money tree, gillybob.

Two wrongs never make a right Durhamjen if we all had to have what everyone else has there would be nothing left. I appreciate that there are some lower paid NHS workers but likewise there are people who are on low wages in every walk of life and everyone seems to think they are a special case. I don't think the MP's have agreed the pay rise it was just recommended. I would love to give myself and my employees a pay rise (myself first as I earn the least amount per hour) but unfortunately to give anyone a rise, someone would have to go and that is the truth. This is real life, where only what comes in can go out. Like the country sadly we do not have a money tree.

Sorry off subject a touch but had to laugh when the striking midwife was asked by Jeremy Vine how much she earned and was forced to admit to earning £39,000 per year plus benefits. Hardly a drop in the ocean is it?

Exactly, Deeda.
The reason they want the payrise is because their pay has fallen behind inflation over the last four years.

https://fullfact.org/live/2014/oct/nhs_pay_below_inflation-35714

Tories in the papers today are saying that they should have their 9% payrise because an independent review body says they should. It was an independent body that said the NHS staff should have 1%. However, most NHS staff are women, so they do not count.
The pay review body said the 1% was affordable, so how come Hunt knows better? What's the point of having a pay review body if you are just going to ignore it? What did the government expect the review body to say?

OK so Jeremy Hunt says implementing the pay rise would mean getting rid of thousands of nurses and midwives. What exactly are his plans for looking after thousands of patients left with no one to tend them if this happened? Why do they keep getting this back to front? Healthcare should start with the number of frontline staff needed to deal with the patients you are going to have. These people need to be paid a living wage and the government should be working out how to fund it properly - not just throwing random sums of money around.

This is part of an article by Polly Toynbee about recruiting nurses.
It shows just why they are striking, and why we should have sympathy for them.

"Nurses take three years to train, so where do you find some in a hurry? Watford’s chief executive, Samantha Jones, is one of hundreds of managers frantically sending recruiters abroad to trawl for them. She’s been hunting in Portugal, Italy and Spain. Others try Romania and the Philippines, while agencies say Ireland is drained of nurses, as squads of trusts compete to entice them. I spoke to one agency who described “so much competition, all of us fishing in the same pools for nurses for different hospitals”. What does it cost? The agents get paid £3,000 a nurse, some seeking 300 nurses for one hospital. Why not save money with a single recruitment system? Because there is no longer a “national” in the NHS: it’s every trust for themselves.

Last year about 6,000 foreign nurses were imported, a number rising fast. But the NHS lost over 4,000 nurses, as they emigrated to better paid, less stressful work in Australia, the US and New Zealand, all higher health spenders per capita. Britain loses its most experienced nurses in exchange for far less experienced staff who need tuition in clinical English."

I like this one as well.

michaelrosenblog.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/if-they-say-poor-are-problem-lets-say.html

Thanks, bags, it's very moving.

I liked it very much thankyou for the link thatbags