What are grades?

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HI! I from the USA and I was doing some personal research on nursing in the UK. I came across several job sites that listed nursing grades, such as A, B, and so on. Can someone please explain this to me? I'm pretty sure this is refering to how much knowledge and experience a person has, but still I would like to know.

You will probably find that these grades you refer to will soon become extinct as we now have something called 'Agenda for Change'. Basically, all nursing posts will now be 'banded' - the higher the band number, the more senior/advanced the job is, requiring enhanced skills, therefore the higher the salary is. The grades you speak of were as follows :

A & B grades - health care assistants (or techs)

C grade - equivalent to your LPN/LVN

D grade - newly qualified RN

E & F grades - RN with enhanced experiences

G grade - ward manager

H & I grades - usually Nurse Specialists/Nurse Practitioners

Agenda for change is very high profile in the UK at the moment and my explanation above is perhaps over-simplistic, but it's the best I could do at this late hour :yawn:

Tina

Thanks so much! I greatly appreciate your explanations.

Nurse specialist?

Specializes in Medical and general practice now LTC.
Nurse specialist?

Nurses who specialise in a certain condition/disease and who gain further education/courses/experience in that speciality. ie Respiratory nurse who has done a diploma/degree/masters in respiratory care covering all respiratory management. If I wasn't planning on leaving for the US I would be going this route and had started the process by doing a spirometry/lung function course. The course do have to be a recognised course from a recognised source.

Specializes in RN, BSN, CHDN.

Hi,

Grades are shortly to be replaced by pay bands just to confuse you even more

For RN's the pay band starts at 5 and goes up depending on job title and experience.

Nobody really knows for sure how it is going to work but we asured that our pay will not be affected adversly.

If you go to http://www.dh.gov.uk there is information there.

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