mande

With all the replies posted this seems to be a world wide problem,The major budget usage in a Hospital is on Nursing Salaries,this seems to make it very difficult for hospital administration to increase or pay better salaries as they then dont make any money. Drs and other staff are able to increase their income depending on the amount of work they do. No matter how hard we work we still earn the same. In south Africa i work in a major 30 bed Trauma Intensive Care unit and you would be shocked to hear that i earn the equivelent of 7 Dollars an hour. This rate ensures that i have to work at 3 jobs in order to care for my family. So when you work at more than 1 job no matter what you feel about nursing you feel overworked and underpaid. ------------------

I Graduated in 1981 from a Hospital based Nursing programme where most of the time we spent learning how to nurse and the rest was spent at Colledge. I Graduated 3 years later at the Johannesburg General Hospital, working at a teaching Hospital and being involved in the Clinical setting from Day one I thought taught me how to Nurse, and i was convinced i knew how for Many years. It was only after I completed post Graduate Training in Paediatrics,Trauma and Intensive Care some 10 years later did i realise how little i actually did know. The little you are taught makes you bold enough to believe you know it all, the more qualified you get the more you realise you did not know.