[Archived] Bash the Nurses Thread...

[joey_big_nose]

Nurses are the second most over rated bunch of whinging to$$ers in the country.

There is a lot of irony in you describing nurses in that way to be followed by that diatribe! I have no particular attachment to nurses but that has to be one of the vilest self absorbed rants that I have ever read. These people do you and the country a service, they deserve a little respect. You might not agree with their pay demands, thats your perogative, but don't be a child and call them names.

Nursing is not an unskilled position, to become a registered nurse you need to gain a diploma and study for two years. And part of the reason for their low wages is that the Meidcal profession lies in the public sector. If it was private you can bet your bottom dollar nurses and certianly Doctors would be paid a hell of a lot more just like in the US.

[mike at picture]

In my line of work i've come accross a few nurses (stop sniggering at the back) Like fire and Police personnel they are ordinary people doing an extraordinary job - some good/some bad. Cant speak for Cheshireblue's experiences but to generalise about an entire profession in such a nasty, negative way is bang out of order.

[den]

Come on guys, there's ICBINF for all this.

[Claytons Left Boot]

Nurses are the second most over rated bunch of whinging to$$ers in the country.

The first being Rovers fans.

[Fife Rover]

There is a lot of irony in you describing nurses in that way to be followed by that diatribe! I have no particular attachment to nurses but that has to be one of the vilest self absorbed rants that I have ever read. These people do you and the country a service, they deserve a little respect. You might not agree with their pay demands, thats your perogative, but don't be a child and call them names.

Nursing is not an unskilled position, to become a registered nurse you need to gain a diploma and study for two years. And part of the reason for their low wages is that the Meidcal profession lies in the public sector. If it was private you can bet your bottom dollar nurses and certianly Doctors would be paid a hell of a lot more just like in the US.

You are just a little out of date there Joey. For about 10 years or so now, it has been a requirement for Registration as a General Nurse to complete a 3 year degree course, and then follow this by a years on the job probationary training in a hospital. If you want to specialise eg Mental Nursing or Midwife etc there has to be another 1 or 2 year course at Uni followed by at least 2 years on the job training before complete registration. Also all Registered Nurses are required (as in all professions) to keep up to date with continuing professional training as new techniques or knowledge becomes available.

As for the rest of your post: spot on!

[blue phil]

I have no particular attachment to nurses but that has to be one of the vilest self absorbed rants that I have ever read.

You're quite right , Joey , it was ......

Well done , Chesh ; superb stuff

[Roaming Rover]

The problem is the more you pay nurses, then the quality of nursing goes down. People go into nursing to care for people, they deserve a good wage just like anyone else, but you get nurses now who have come into the profession for the money. Therefore small things like cleaning the ward, anything IT related etc etc are not their job as 'I'm here to care for patients.....'. How is keeping a ward clean and therefore free from MRSA not helping the patient.

I lived in a nurses home for a year. A couple of nurses used to moan all the time about nurses wages, that was until the graduated and could afford to buy a new car etc etc. The media builds up a lot of this nurses and low wages stuff into something a lot worse than it actually is.

What needs sorting is not necessarily wages but working hours, safety in the work place which are the real issues.

[adopted scouser]

You're quite right , Joey , it was ......

Well done , Chesh ; superb stuff

Pretty sure he's got the fishing rod out Phil, pity it wasn't dentists .......

[broadsword]

I don't think nurses should be bashed.

They should have their horny little skirts pulled up, put over my knee and be spanked firmly.

[DP]

totally agree Bryan. Cameron will get my vote if he comes out with that suggestion (and I wouldn't put it past him, he's so desperate).

It's interesting that it's the usual pro-right suspects knocking the nurses for their pay demands. Yet if nurses were paid more there would be more young people going into nursing which would reduce the need for agency staff who cost more per hour and are usually brought in from overseas. The problem with the NHS lies within overpaid management who don't do their jobs properly.

I used to go out with a nurse and I remember having a particularly bad day at work when my computer crashed and I lost all my work (or something equally unimportant). Where as she had to watch one of her terminally ill patients (a young boy) die who she had been caring for for several months. Think I earned about double what she did at the time.

[Jimbo]

The UKCC and their Project 2000 have a lot to answer for - changing the face of nursing from being the caring profession it was originally to requiring all nurses to be "diploma" nurses. The old way with RNs with 3 year academic based training and the ENs with their 2 year practical training offered a better mix for the ward. Now it seems all nurses really want to be pseudo doctors. And as far as reregistation goes -it's all about generating funds for the governing bodies. I'm off on a 4 day Solaris 10 course next week and my company is paying for all the training and expenses - it's not even mandatory for me to do - just part of my wish list. But if I was a nurse, I'd have to fund it myself and take holiday to do it - this for something that I must do to keep my job - outrageous !

[blue phil]

Pretty sure he's got the fishing rod out Phil, pity it wasn't dentists .......

You must know my opinion of dentists then , AS .......greedy scum the lot of them .

I got a letter the other day off mine expecting me to pay £15 just to remain on his list for the next year

But back on topic ..... I like nurses . An investment of the price of a couple of halves a lager quite often paid dividends .......or used to in my younger days

[thenodrog]

The problem is the more you pay nurses, then the quality of nursing goes down. People go into nursing to care for people, they deserve a good wage just like anyone else, but you get nurses now who have come into the profession for the money. Therefore small things like cleaning the ward, anything IT related etc etc are not their job as 'I'm here to care for patients.....'. How is keeping a ward clean and therefore free from MRSA not helping the patient.

Exactly right and the same goes for the Police. Both used to be a vocation rather than a career until it all seemed to changed in the Tory years of the 1980's. Academic qualifications now mean that many 'natural born' nurses never get to nurse.

DP also makes a valid point about too much spent on admin.

imo staff discipline as administered by Matron, Sister and Staff nurse 30 years ago is now sadly missing.

btw Easy Chesh....Down boy! Whilst I do tire of their job being continually overstated I do not actually want to see em exterminated.

[thenodrog]

I lived in a nurses home for a year. A couple of nurses used to moan all the time

I spent a large part of my early 20's in a nurses home too! I could only ever get one of em to moan then though.

[jim mk2]

You must know my opinion of dentists.......greedy scum the lot of them .

And the "scum" should refuse to treat you next time you have raging toothache .

The problem with modern nurses is that they are over-qualified and see themselves more as medicine dispensers/junior doctors and no longer perform what they consider to be menial tasks such as making beds, bed-washing patients and keeping wards clean. That said, they are not particularly well paid, they work long and unsocial hours and have an important role to play in society. Kevin Nolan is correct in what he says and at least he seems to realise that there is a "real" world outside the privileged football bubble he inhabits.

Cheshire Blue's diatribe shows him for the arsehole he is .

[Wiggy]

Some nurses do a good job and some bad but there can be doubt that they have been extremely well treated by the taxpayer in recent years ( particularly in regards to pensions compared with the wealth creating section of society). As for this garbage about the private sector having higher wages than the public, that situation changed some time back.

From a previous thread.

nurses - like doctors - have enjoyed large above-inflation pay deals in recent years. If their leaders think the public will back strike action now, they're wrong. One reason is that while private-sector pensions are crumbling, public sector workers can still join generous final salary schemes.

Last week, ministers sneaked out figures showing the future total cost of NHS pensions up from £104bn two years ago, to £166bn now. Every penny of this huge sum will have to be met by taxpayers. So, as private sector pensions are crushed - and average private sector wages are below pay in the public sector - striking nurses won't win the battle for hearts and minds.

Nurses pay

[Paul]

Hmmm, I'm so tempted but don't have the energy right now. Being married to a member of the health care profession, not a nurse, and having a son entering the profession, I should declare a certain bias.

Those who complain about nurses pay do not understand one very simple fact. If it were not for the goodwill and dedication of senior, experienced nurses most wards in this country would collapse. In all areas of the nursing profession (speaking broadly) staffing levels have reached a point where hospital management are reliant on this goodwill. Management know any decent nurse or similar worker will not walk away at the end of a shift. My wife regularly, i.e every shift, works at least 20% of her time unpaid. Those who complain about these "serial whingers" might like to consider how they would feel if the nursing staff looked at their watches and said sorry my shift is finished, I'm going now, and left a sick or dieing relative to suffer.

One thing which does get my goat on this subject is the money we invest in training nurses and then fail to offer jobs to the newly-qualified. This is not a rant against Australia or those who chose to emigrate. However there are Australian hospitals carrying out wholesale poaching of recently-qualified nursing staff from the UK. In October 2006 Cairns hospital launched an advertising campaign in Stoke-on-Trent, recruiting 84 qualified and recently qualified nurses (the entire intake of one traing year), all on pay some 15-20% better than the UK. Other Australian hospitals have made clear they have similar intentions, indeed one Sydney hospital is 80% staffed by immigrant nurses. Again I have no problem with Australia, Australians or anyone who wishes to emigrate but it is scandalous the UK tax payer is funding four years of training only for these students to pack their bags and leave the country without in some way repaying or compensating the UK tax payer for the substantial investment made in their futures.

Obviously this happens in every profession but at a time when wards are under-staffed, experienced staff have no choice other than to work additional hours as a matter of goodwill and are leaving the profession in their droves, it is outrageous the government do not take steps to ensure newly-qualified, expensively trained staff are given every motivation, financial and otherwise, to remain in the UK. We are storing up a very big problem for the future and if nurses are not adequately rewarded now those who complain today may have even more to moan about in 20 years or so when they need dedicated health professionals to care for them.

[dave birch]

Paul, guess what happens here?

Adverts for nurse to go and work in Britain. Supposedly better pay and hours.

Infact, your third para could apply to anyone coming out of any education system in any country in the world.

[neekoy]

Very much so Paul, in fact I get approached on a monthly basis to work in the UK

[ABBEY]

You must know my opinion of dentists then , AS .......greedy scum the lot of them .

I got a letter the other day off mine expecting me to pay £15 just to remain on his list for the next year

But back on topic ..... I like nurses . An investment of the price of a couple of halves a lager quite often paid dividends .......or used to in my younger days

i could have wrote this word for word.!!lol

thing is you pay N I and stuff but you cant find a national health dentist for love nor money....I was lucky/unlucky in that i a ripped half a tooth out on a peanut and had to ring the emergency number because i was in pain (emergency now thats a laugh I rang 8am saturday morning and got seen at 4pm on the monday afternoon) but it was coincidence that when i went they are taking people on,pm if you need details because i think hes croation ? and im not even attempting to spell it.He patched me up and said if I wanted it crowning proper it would be £300+ on the nash 300!!!

nurses at chorley were fantastic with me and my family when my dad a few years back.

[ABBEY]

Very much so Paul, in fact I get approached on a monthly basis to work in the UK

i get approached daily by my boss..get that wagon outta here now you lazy arse.

[stuwilky]

Some nurses do a good job and some bad but there can be doubt that they have been extremely well treated by the taxpayer in recent years ( particularly in regards to pensions compared with the wealth creating section of society). As for this garbage about the private sector having higher wages than the public, that situation changed some time back.

There are plenty of myths about Public Sector pensions, and as for pay - I work in HE, and for my equivalent post in the private sector I would be on circa 10k more. But I choose to get paid less and get an extra week off work.

Note - Im not complaining, I made the choice.

[Cheshireblue]

heshire Blue's diatribe shows him for the arsehole he is .

Where as you are clearly an erudite individual with sound ethical and personal morality. Perhaps you would like to make another libellous comment about my wife (whom you have never met) just to cement your good standing on here? You Dawk. Still taking Murdochs shilling? At least you are well placed to comment upon arseholes if you are.

As for Nurses - Anybody else on here still benefitting from a final salary pension scheme funded entirely by the tax payer? Or are you all in defined contribution schemes which are at the mercy of Gordon Browns arbitrary tax policy?

As for wards collapsing if it wasn't for nurses - They already have. A friends father went into hospital last week to have part of a tumourous colon removed. He was in pre-op for 36 hours, they could not actually tell his family where he was or when he was operated upon. When he came out, he received no nursing care on the high dependancy word that he was on (God only knows what the normal wards are like) and when they actually brought him his food, there was no cutlery. How do you eat soup and ice cream without a spoon? 2 hours later, the spoon arrived.

They think they are porceline Gods, when in fact they are just as shabby and inefficient as any other industry. They should be ten times better than everybody else because they are dealing with peoples lives. They are not. I have more respect for firemen, and they are money grabbing whingers too.

And don't try and tell me that a nursing degree is a proper degree. How many intelligent nurses have you net? It's hardly like reading classics at Oxford is it.

[stuwilky]

The last 3 occasions I have been unfortunate enough to require nursing care

- an operation in January

- my wife having gall bladder surgery in 2004

- my son having childhood pneumonia in 2003

The nursing staff have all been nothing short of excellent, the wards and theatres were spotless and the nursing staff efficient, attentive and a delight to have caring for us.

[BlueMonday]

Nursing WAS a vocation when the general public were appreciative of public sector workers.

As a nurse myself I find the sentiments of C.B. & T.N.D. disheartening and highlight why it is so demoralising to serve the public. Being a nurse unfortunately often puts you in the firing line of the publics anger and sometimes aggression. This is often because of the way they have been treated by a far from ideal the system.

Nursing is a difficult and very demanding profession which relies heavily on the dedication and professionalism of nurses.

I personally have never complained about pay. I also haven't complained about the abuse I have received from patients families or the 100's of hours of unpaid overtime.

C.B & T.N.D. Fair enough if you think Nurses Day is a Joke or we are paid more enough. But please Don't run the profession down.