Job Crisis In The NHS

Silverdragon102, BSN · Jul 4, 2007

yes it is true and not just for newly qualified but for those with experience who move. It is a big shame cos staffing levels are a bare minimum and staff are getting fed up with all the added work and stress from management. Patient care is being affected although management would like everyone to think otherwise

linda216 · Jul 5, 2007

What is a standard patient:nurse ratio in a med ward? Have they begun using ancillary or support staff to do nursing tasks?

Are NHS nurses moving to the private sector? Is there a significant difference between NHS and private nursing pay?

Are there more available nursing positions in long-term and rehab care?

Sorry for all the questions, but I am tying to learn as much as I can about nursing in GB. I'll be happy to answer anyone's questions about the US.

Silverdragon102, BSN · Jul 5, 2007

What is a standard patient:nurse ratio in a med ward? Have they begun using ancillary or support staff to do nursing tasks?
Are NHS nurses moving to the private sector? Is there a significant difference between NHS and private nursing pay?
Are there more available nursing positions in long-term and rehab care?
Sorry for all the questions, but I am tying to learn as much as I can about nursing in GB. I'll be happy to answer anyone's questions about the US.

Standard nurse ratio I think differs from hospital to hospital but my experience was on acute medical admission ward taking all medical admissions to the hospital whether from clinics, A&E/ER and community was 3 RN and 2 care assistants to a turn over of patients of up to 30 patients a shift with 17 beds and depending on admitting rota and transferring patients into appropriate beds. On medical wards I worked on the ratio was 2RN's 2-3 care assistants to 28 patients. We do everything from basic care to medication including IV drugs including mixing certain ones mainly antibiotics as pharmacy tried when ever to get out of doing them, nebulizer therapy, being a florist and pickfords (standard joke as we are always moving patients and their belongs around)

I would say there is no or very little pay difference between NHS and private

A lot of long termcare is closing as they find the regulations and rules are too expensive or too many adaptations to make that they can't afford and re hab tends to be done in the hospital

This is just my experience and find a lot of staff are just buring out as no one seems bothered about the stress and workload put on them. I remember when I trained in 1986-8 because students was trained and employed by the hospital and not supernummary there was plenty of bodies on the ward both on morning and afternoon shift that work was done and you had time to sit with patients now you are lucky to take a break

english_nurse · Jul 5, 2007

hi

i work on a nephrology ward in the nhs, we typicaly have 18 patients, plus at night we run an out of hours service for patients who are on peritoneal dialysis in the community.

at present we are short of 3 staff nurses and 2 healthcare assistants, another staff nurse is leaving in september so that will make it 4 short. we are not allowed to recruit.

this can cause problems, especially at night if we have agency or bank staff, for example, to care for the dialysis patients when they are inpatients you are supposed to be specially trained, the other night a bank nurse was disconnecting a patient from his machine- not allowed!!!! as the risk of peritonitis is so high,

so all in all patient care suffers

this staffing problem seems to go in cycles, when i qualified 4 years ago i chose my job, im sure it will be like that again eventually

english_nurse · Jul 5, 2007

i need to add that we have had 30 escalation beds up in my hospital almost permanetly for 2 years now, these beds are supposed to be up for when there is a bed crisis, they are staffed continually by agency or bank staff which cost a fortune, why dont they staff these beds properly with proper staff which dont cost 45 pounds an hour each, im sure the care would be better and there are loads of really good girls trained by my hospital who are desperate for jobs....

linda216 · Jul 5, 2007

Thanks for your information. It sounds like you find yourselves in the same situation as we do here.

Our ratios sound better than yours, but we do mountains of paperwork for private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid (the government programs for elderly/disabled and welfare). Many of our "burnout" nurses move to the private side to work for private insurance to determine how much insurance and what tests/procedures/days in hospital the insurance will cover. You get a Monday to Friday job with no patient care.

There's also a big movement to become electronic and many facilities are installying computer systems to collect info, dispense meds, etc. I do like this trend and think it will help in the long-term, but I find many nurses to be very stubborn about moving to the new technologies.

We're also expected to do the work of ancillaries, as well.

Fonenurse · Jul 10, 2007

These job crises seem to come in cycles - sad thing is, as an old lady I have seen them happen several times now. When I qualified in 1982 I ended up working in Woolworths on the sweet (candy) counter for a while before I could secure a nursing job. This happened again for nurses in the late 1980's and at some point in the 90's, and again now. Its hard, but the jobs will come back - but thats not particularly reassuring for those without them right now...