Are UK nurses underpaid and overworked?

[Unreliable]

I see this all the time! Is this really true? I heard that 61% of nurses wouldn't recommend their career(in the UK).

[skylark, BSN, RN]

I respect that you have your opinions on this, but my experience has been very different. How long did you work in each country?

Perhaps I wasn't clear, I am in a union job and therefore have relative job security, but the firings I described were friends in non-union jobs. Job security in the US is nowhere like that in the UK. I have had jobs in the US where I was scared to take my vacation in case my job was gone when I got back, and one time that was true, I came back to find my job had been given away.

I never had that worry in the NHS, plus of course I had at least twice the annual vacation anyway!

And job satisfaction and stresses -

Perhaps this is a reflection on individual hospitals, but I have found that nursing practice in the US is in many way a long way behind that in Europe. In the NHS we could challenge practice if we could support our views, and we constantly progressed by updating our evidence-based practice.

In the US it still seems to be that we do what the manager says, regardless of how outdated or irrelevant her wishes are. I heard a while ago of nurses in a SNF who were ordered to wake up all residents at least once a night to assess their GCS. What the heck is that all about? Managers can make up crazy rules and nobody can challenge them for fear of getting fired?

I find that outdated approach far more stressful than any number of crazy psych patients screaming at me in our wonderful ER!

[HandmadeRN]

In the UK, we get PAID to do our nursing degrees.

Employers sponsor you and keep your job open at the same time.

/QUOTE]

As per Vandiola's comment. It used to be the case in the UK that our training was paid for but the current health minister in all his wisdom (I'm British, so please read that as being particularly sarcastic) decided to change that. In order to increase the numbers of British trained nurses, he decided to get rid of the nursing bursary because that would fund more places at university for nursing students. So new nursing students are faced with taking out massive student loans to support themselves and going into a job that is not well paid. And a job that currently has a pay freeze on it. As a result, the number of new nursing graduates has taken a nose dive.

See: Nursing degree applications slump after NHS bursaries abolished | Education | The Guardian

It is true that much of our post qualification training (for now) is subsidised by our employers and that is a good thing. And whilst a generous holiday and pensions allowance are a nice benefit (although for those of you that left the NHS years ago, that pension is certainly not what it used to be now), I would rather have more in my salary at the end of day. I for one am super tired of seeing the cost of living increase and my wages being stuck in the dark ages.

So yes, in a nutshell we are overworked and underpaid. But i'm sure this is a similar situation to lots of other nurses in other countries. Most of us chose nursing because we wanted to make a difference and not because it was going to make us rich.