Are things really so bad!?

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Hi all.

My partner and I are working in Australia at the moment and are due to return next year. We're getting more and more worried that we're not even going to be able to find jobs as nurses when we come home!

We're getting so many horror stories from home about nursing redundancies and job freezes. To a certain extent this has been backed up by the NHS jobs websites which seems to be lacking in any jobs! How has this happened!!!

The Trust that we used to work for is having 60 nursing redundancies and all the G grades (or whatever they're called now) have had to reapply for the positions, as they're too many of them! They've even shut a ward, despite being on bed state red.

So, be honest, are the doom-mongers justified, is the NHS in melt down????

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Specializes in renal,peritoneal dialysis, medicine.

well, i think the doom mongers are right if they are referring to my hospital

all senior nurses are to re-apply for their jobs in my hospital, and if it is found that there are too many seniors on one ward and not enough on another they will be redeployed or spread about the hospital, but i am told that junior nurses and hca posts may be increased, im sure this is a way of making people unhappy so they can shed jobs from the trust without making anyone redundant.

from january i have to pay £120 a year to park at work!

the whole hospital has to do off duty rota until april, yes april, to show the management how to balance the books, including all holidays etc, no bank are to be booked to cover shifts that are short

yesterday there was only one staff nurse and two hcas on my ward for 20 renal beds, 3 dialysis, one bay of confused/agitated patients, plus all the usual work.

i cant imagine how those patients fared at mealtime, who fed them? who made sure they had adequate fluids etc, there wasnt enough staff to do it.

if i were a patient in the nhs at the moment i would be frightened.

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I am a D grade staff nurse. They are closing 3 wards at my hospital (bed alert red as well) and we are out of luck as far as jobs. Some of us are getting redeployed and some are getting made redundant. They can't afford to keep us or pay redundancy pay so they are making life miserable hoping that we will quit. Things are pretty bad at my trust.

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That is the reality! A number of senior posts at my hospital no longer exist. Those people had to take voluntary redundancy. About 4 wards have been closed and the staff distributed around the hospital. Where I work, we currently have 6 CCU beds which will soon be reduced to 4. Of the 20 people that work there, only 9 will have a job in December!

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yesterday there was only one staff nurse and two hcas on my ward for 20 renal beds, 3 dialysis, one bay of confused/agitated patients, plus all the usual work.

i cant imagine how those patients fared at mealtime, who fed them? who made sure they had adequate fluids etc, there wasnt enough staff to do it.

if i were a patient in the nhs at the moment i would be frightened.

This makes me mad because then the public accuses nurses of not feeding patients because they are "too clever to care, too posh to wash".

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Im sorry Id love to say something different from the above posts but I cant. I am in Scotland and things are the same here. Senior nurses having to apply for thier own jobs in some cases 5 senior nurses being asked to apply for the now reduced 3 jobs. No open vacancies and none for the forseeable future. When jobs do come up there are so many good nurses on the nursing bank with experience already in the hospital they end up getting the jobs.

Even if you get a job you are then stuck in "dead mans shoes" Ive been a D grade for 6 years in that time I have got both my Nursing degree and a degree in Behavioural Psychology but still no E grade in sight I will literaly have to wait till the E grades above me die or or retire awful but true!!!!!

And now to add insult to injury they have introduced agenda for change and I am now financially worse off each month since. When Im in work we never have enough staff to make the place safe never mind bearable.

I have had enough we are off to the usa where I can actually have a choice of employers and positions. My advice stay in Australia or go to usa.

Ruthx

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Specializes in med/surg.

If I were you I'd try & stay in Oz!! Or go to New Zealand!!

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I had a feeling the responses to my intital post would be in this vain, buts its just so maddening that the NHS is being allowed to collapse like this! Something needs to happen to fix the situation. In Australia the job is just so much less stressful and as a result the care is much better.

Whilst out here, as well as working as an RN I've experienced being a patient. To be honest I am so glad that I became unwell over here and not at home! Things just seem to happen so much quicker because resources are so much better. I had MRI and CT scans within 2 hours of being requested, not 2 days as in the UK. All fluids go through pumps, any patient can have an air matteress on the same day, theres electric beds everywhere. Wards don't fight each other for equipment because theres enough to go around. If a ward is short staffed they bring in agency/bank straight away. If they can't staff a ward, they close beds!

Threre are still things better in the UK of course. The main thing is that British nurses seem to have a better sense of humour, probably because they need it. Theres not much banter on Ozzie wards! Also the Dr/Nurse relationship is a bit 1980s and they have some slightly old fashioned ideas and an obsesseion with burettes! But thats about it, the pay is also relatively better here, and theres lots of jobs!

Problem is, its just so bloody far from home!!!!

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Specializes in midwifery, NICU.
Im sorry Id love to say something different from the above posts but I cant. I am in Scotland and things are the same here. Senior nurses having to apply for thier own jobs in some cases 5 senior nurses being asked to apply for the now reduced 3 jobs. No open vacancies and none for the forseeable future. When jobs do come up there are so many good nurses on the nursing bank with experience already in the hospital they end up getting the jobs.

Even if you get a job you are then stuck in "dead mans shoes" Ive been a D grade for 6 years in that time I have got both my Nursing degree and a degree in Behavioural Psychology but still no E grade in sight I will literaly have to wait till the E grades above me die or or retire awful but true!!!!!

And now to add insult to injury they have introduced agenda for change and I am now financially worse off each month since. When Im in work we never have enough staff to make the place safe never mind bearable.

I have had enough we are off to the usa where I can actually have a choice of employers and positions. My advice stay in Australia or go to usa.

Ruthx

Ruth, I am a midwife(scotland), did you find it easy to get employment abroad/ I wonder how easy midwives would get a post in Oz or the USA, I am not a nurse, only midwifery trained, but have since done my IC Neonatal course.

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Ruth, I am a midwife(scotland), did you find it easy to get employment abroad/ I wonder how easy midwives would get a post in Oz or the USA, I am not a nurse, only midwifery trained, but have since done my IC Neonatal course.

Hi there,

Your problem wouldnt be getting a job but getting your licience to nurse in usa. It is a very long and involved process and wether you have done midwifery/mental health nursing or general training most nurses are short of hours for the usa as they do a very general training. Mental health nurses are usually short medical and surgical hours and the general nurses can be short of psychiatric hours. I figure a midwife may be short of psychiatric and medical surgical hours. The only way to find out is to decide where in usa you would want to work and follow their guidelines for applying there. This involves applying to an agency (often CGFNS) that collate all your qualifications and evaluate with the board of nusing you chose what hours you are short.

If you are not short hours you can get permission to sit the nursing exam nclex then once you pass this you can look for a job which is the easy bit they are so short of nurses in usa!!! If you are short hours then you can make them up in a uk recognised nursing school (hard to do hard to find a college who will let you) or go to usa to make up hours on a student visa (expensive to do).

Now as for OZ I have no idea for midwife but as a psychiatric nurse it was REALLY easy to get a job and visa literaly 12 months form 1st call to an agency to landing in oz and starting work. OZ is VERY UK Nurse friendly and their visa process so much easier and friendlier than usa. As a psychiatric nurse I would not need to make up any hours at all.

Good luck,

Ruthx

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Specializes in med/surg.
Ruth, I am a midwife(scotland), did you find it easy to get employment abroad/ I wonder how easy midwives would get a post in Oz or the USA, I am not a nurse, only midwifery trained, but have since done my IC Neonatal course.

Just to make it very clear you cannot become a nurse in the USA unless you have done the full general training. Midwifery is not a recognised qualification, neither is paediatric, mental health or psychiatric it has to be general plain & simple. Even todays adult nurses lack the hours because they don't do enough paeds, maternity or psychiatry in their courses.

Only nurses who trained the "old fashioned" way or did the earlier P2000 courses (roughly up to the mid 1990's) have the required hours (bar a few who were lucky to do later courses that still had the full general training of the older style ones).

I can't speak for Australia but that's it in a nutshell for the USA. There are plenty of threads on this subject for you to check out.

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Specializes in ICU, midwifery, Nurse Practitioner.
Ruth, I am a midwife(scotland), did you find it easy to get employment abroad/ I wonder how easy midwives would get a post in Oz or the USA, I am not a nurse, only midwifery trained, but have since done my IC Neonatal course.

Hi dani

Its very easy to get a job in Oz as a UK trained midwife. Direct entry is recognised over there. I worked as a midwife in Sydney, it took a liitle over 5 months from applying for registration to getting on the plane to fly out there. Very little costs involved (other than getting certificates notorised!!) Great weather and an all round lovely place to live! Check out this link it tells you all need to know about registering with the NMB.

Nurses and Midwives Board - Home

xx:monkeydance:

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