Too many patients. Too little pay. Losing it.

[moonmelody]

Hey, all. Allow me to apologise in advance for the negativity. I'm having a tough time at the moment and need to vent.

So I'm a new RN who graduated 8 months ago. I was born and raised in the States but have been living in the UK for years and did my degree here. I've been working in major trauma and really, really am loving it for the most part. However, the realities of being a nurse here are starting to eat away at me.

Firstly, the nurse to patient ratio is brutal. Unless you work in an ICU or HDU, you can expect to have 6 to 10 patients per shift. The trauma unit I work on has 28 beds, and on a day when we are fully staffed we have 4 RNs and 3 healthcare assistants (HCAs, quite like CNAs but they don't need any prior training and have a fairly narrow scope of practice).

Secondly, we are required to do rotating shifts. During each 4 week rota we have 14 12.5 hour shifts, so that works out to 2 4 shift weeks and 2 3 shift weeks, and have to do an equal amount of nights and days. But they are split up and different every rota, and we often come off a night shift and then have to come in the next morning for a day shift.

Thirdly, the pay is impossible to survive on, especially if you have a family. New grad RNs like me make [COLOR=#252525]£10 an hour, we don't get paid overtime, and after taxes it's just so deflating. [/COLOR]

[COLOR=#252525]I knew it was going to be hard, and in this country you definitely don't go into the career for the money. The high patient load and feeble pay are just part and parcel of having a socialised health care system. And don't get me wrong, the NHS can be a godsend in many ways. No one ever has to fear going into debt because they get cancer or need any other lifesaving intervention. But I feel like nurses are overworked and underpaid to the extreme.

I'm afraid of burning out. I am afraid of losing my love of nursing. But mostly I fear that maybe I'm just a big whiny baby and perhaps am not cut out for being a nurse here. Most of my colleagues seem to cope just fine. Perhaps they're better at hiding their stress. I don't know.[/COLOR]

[Susie2310]

Assuming you intend to stay in the UK, my suggestion is to gain experience and then move on to another nursing position within the NHS. Even though your current pay is very low, my understanding is that by working for the NHS you will automatically be eligible for an NHS pension after a certain number of years service - that is a lot better than what many nurses working in the US experience even though they receive higher salaries. Also, as you mentioned, through the NHS you have access to health care (which you contribute towards by working and paying taxes). You would also receive EU vacation time which I understand is several weeks a year; your nurse's uniform is paid for by your employer and with the NHS you would have relative job security and many opportunities for career advancement or working in different areas once you gain more experience. So there are other ways of looking at your situation.

I assume you knew what the starting pay and patient ratios would be for a nurse in the UK when you made the decision to train as a nurse so presumably this fact is not a surprise to you although I sympathize with the realities. For the time being I suggest patience. I hope you manage to find a way to continue your career as a nurse as it sounds as though you really enjoy nursing and patients benefit from receiving nursing care from nurses who like being nurses (and who of course are competent nurses). Best wishes to you.

[Maevish, ASN, RN]

How do you even go home if you come off a night shift and do a day shift (I'm assuming nights and days start the same time over there too, since I've had friends who've worked there and told me)??! That's crazy!

The pay is pretty bad, but as you move up the bands it should get better (if not amazing) and if you move to ICU after awhile you may like that better, but otherwise, I'm not sure what your options are aside from staying to get experience and maybe talking to you coworkers. Maybe get a job on the side after you have more experience? Private duty, etc?

XO