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Outstanding NHS nurses quietly defiant on the fence

Standing on a fence in sub-zero temperatures outside St Mary’s hospital in west London on Thursday, members of the Royal College of Nursing made history – but the reality is that very few people feel it. feel satisfied.

Reversing traditional union opposition to strikes to organize the first layoff in the 106 years of the RCN’s existence was a psychological leap for many nurses. They argue that falling wages, leading to staff shortages, are jeopardizing patient safety, but most are also deeply conflicted about the trade-off of care for protest.

Among those who defied the cold to protest union demands for a substantial wage increase above inflation, the defiant mood was less anger than a resolve to remain silent.

Gerard Hamilton, a sexual and reproductive health nurse, said he was surrounded by colleagues holding placards that read “It’s time to pay fair wages for nursing staff” and “The shortage employees cost a lot of people.” “I don’t think anyone wants to stand here.”

The RCN is asking for a 5% wage increase above retail price inflation, which was 14% in November, but this has been denied by the government.

Health Secretary Maria Caulfield told Sky News on Thursday: “The 19% demand is not something we can realistically meet. “We could ignore the recommendation of the pay review agencies and give a much lower raise – we could go higher, but we had to find that money somewhere,” she said. “This is not government money, it’s taxpayer money.”

Line graph of the average annual earnings per nurse and full-time health visitor for NHS Hospitals and Community Health Services (based on 100), UK shows Over the past decade, The average basic income of NHS nurses has fallen in real terms

Although passing motorists – and ambulance drivers – honked their horns to signal support for Hamilton and his strikers, he admitted that not all patients understood. Why are the nurses leaving?

“I think for some people, they still think nursing is a profession but we live in a very different society. You will find there are more nurses with professional experience than many doctors and working in a similar way of autonomy, taking full responsibility for everything they are doing for patients,” he said.

Although nurses have been hailed during the Covid emergency, Ruth Dawson, a nursing practitioner at St. Mary’s, felt that since then there has been no tangible recognition. Many of her colleagues had to work freelance shifts outside of their regular jobs to make ends meet. “Consider the full impact on patient care, because we are exhausted and when you are exhausted it can put care at risk,” she warned.

Like Hamilton, she feels that although the profession has changed over the decades, wages and status have not kept up. “I think we are sometimes considered [people who] leave everything to the doctor, when in reality we are diagnosing and prescribing,” she said.

But the walk brought up “really mixed emotions because we wanted to do our job, we wanted to be part of it.” [the hospital]but we’re at a point where there’s no negotiation, [the government] can’t hear what we’re saying.”

On the other side of the country, 22-year-old Melissa Sing expressed similar concerns. She qualified as a nurse in September, after accumulating £85,000 in debt to attend a four-year integrated master’s program in nursing and social work.

“I just thought that if they didn’t hear us, the NHS wouldn’t exist in the end,” she said of the government as she stood at the fence outside the Old Swan pedestrian center in Liverpool. “There are nurses left, right and center. People can’t afford to take care of children, people have to go to food banks,” she added.

Ellen Grogan, left, strikes outside St Mary’s, London, on Thursday © Anna Gordon/FT

Sing, who earns around £27,000 a year, is unsure exactly what would constitute an acceptable offer from ministers. “I just thought there was a way for them to pay us an amount commensurate with the cost of living, but they didn’t even consider that. I don’t think we are appreciated by the government.”

At nearby Alder Hey, one of Europe’s largest children’s hospitals, 64-year-old clinical nurse specialist Adrian Williams said the strike was not just about money.

“It’s not just about salary, it’s about conditions and succession management,” he said. “I retired and returned three days [a week]but since they don’t have someone with the same skills as me, I’ve been back for four days and they’re trying to get me to work part-time.”

He added that the newly qualified nurses “have a lot more knowledge than before but they are in debt a lot”. “I started 30 years ago and am a salaried student. The students who come here are now paying to be nurses.”

For Ellen Grogan, a 66-year-old nurse who is a member of the St Mary’s strike committee, the strike is also about patient safety. She retired last year after becoming deeply demoralized and has returned to shift freelance work. “We go to work and are short on staff for each shift so we have to do the work of two or three people. So obviously it’s not safe for the patient,” she said.

She lashed out at what she called the government’s “utter moral betrayal” for not only not participating in salary negotiations but also for the treatment of nurses during the pandemic, when supplies Lifesaving PPE is completely inadequate.

She recalls going to a hardware store and buying goggles for her co-workers out of her own pocket. In the end, she said, she experienced “a real existential crisis. . . I feel that you cannot trust the government and the health service management has been pressured to collude with the government so that you cannot trust them.”

She added that RCN’s action, and the broader campaign for fair pay in the public sector, had “invigorated me and given me [a sense] that there is some hope to be had here.



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