Meanwhile in Nigeria, the health service has imposed a new two year working requirement before nurses qualifications will be validated for work abroad - a measure intended to stop the 'brain drain' of qualified nurses to other countries health care systems... prompting legal action from the nurses
Given the numbers of Nigerian nurses who have headed to the UK, this may prove yet one more factor in the NHS workforce planning problems....
The problem for a workforce plan for the NHS that includes a high dependency on incoming foreign staff, is that having once migrated for work, they will have little compunction about doing so again... having gained (valuable) experience in the NHS, but also have experienced the actuality of the NHS crisis, they often move on.
Unsurprisingly they are heading to countries were staff (nurses) are paid up to double what UK pays!
Having now watched all 3 episodes of #Breathtaking on real-time TV, the Q. that keeps coming to mind, is how did they cope?
the patients, the #nurses, the #doctors and (yes, even) the managers?
made to deal with a situation made worse by a Govt. making it up as it went along, often making it worse due to a lack of concerted leadership, we sacrificed #healthcare professionals to #PTSD, ending over 400 of their lives...
a truly harrowing three hours TV which summed up our own shortcomings
@ChrisMayLA6
I'm still trying to pluck up the courage to watch it. My daughter was an FY2 (24 year old doctor in training, second year out of university) at the start of COVID and spent many, many shifts doing nothing except ringing families to tell them their loved one was dying or dead. While she still loves her job there is a hardness of maybe brittleness in her that wasn't there before.
With student #nurses dropping out of training (or not taking up posts) due to difficulties with #childcare (I'll leave aside the #gendered workforce Q. here), the scale of the problem with England's #NHS workforce planning is revealed by the fact that around 10% of all #nursing vacancies remain unfilled.
And of course, much of this shortfall is being filled by more expensive agency provision....
The failure to solve the staffing crisis in the NHS is just one more aspect of #Tory wrecking!
in 2023 #patient satisfaction with the #NHS dropped by 17% leaving levels the lowest since data collection started in 1997.
In an over-stretched system, where the internal market has reduced procedures & patients to economic data (outputs/efficiency etc.) is it any wonder that people do not feel satisfied?
Improving empathy may be the answer, but the lack of empathy is not only a personal issue for #doctors & #nurses, it has been engineering into the NHS by 'reforms'
@ChrisMayLA6 from experience many many moons ago when things were much better than they are now, in terms of workload. It's very hard, if not impossible, to be empathetic when you're exhausted and there are six more people waiting for your attention. All you really want to do is get even 10 minutes sleep. We at least had rooms with beds to sleep in and a mess to try to unwind in. Today's doctors have neither, & are bottom of the pecking order in hospitals, PAs are afforded greater respect, IME.
The lack of coherent #workforce strategy for the #NHS, leading to a reliance on temporary staff & overtime payments (for already stretched staff) has led to a massive £10bn a year bill.... money which might have been better spent paying #Nurses & #Doctors better & improving their working conditions to encourage more new #workers into #healthcare.
And, yet another aspect of the #NHScrisis; violence towards #nurses.
'... people are losing a little bit of confidence in the NHS. The average person just comes in with a little bit more heightened sense of concern & that can easily flip. If you’re waiting 13-14 hours for an A&E bed and your elderly mother is still stuck on a trolley who wouldn’t be frustrated? It’s absolutely shocking'!
My daughter is a nurse and working a 12 hour shift today. Huge shout out to health care staff, fire fighters and all those working today to keep us healthy and safe. We will be doing our Christmas Day tomorrow so we are all together.
Enjoy yours, if you celebrate it, wherever you are!
@br00t4c This is nuts. Professional nursing has lost its way. So many #antivaxx RN's, ones doing and supporting pseudoscience, its appalling. Inpatient units are too busy but they have time to look you up on social media? Terrible.
@blogdiva There's 4.2 40-hour shifts to cover a week. If we round down and say it takes four nurses to cover two ICU patients for a week, that means the minimum cost just for the nursing care to be in the ICU is whatever you think a week's salary for a nurse should be, times two. So if you think nurses should earn $50k a year, the nursing care for an ICU stay costs $2K a week – not including any doctor labor or janitorial labor, not including any supplies, medication, or the utilities.
@blogdiva This is why we have insurance – whether US style private insurance, or some sort of national health service, or any of the other solutions to the basic problem that individuals really generally cannot remotely afford things like ICU stays out of pocket, not if we pay anything like a fair wage to the healthcare workers involved.
My #union - the union that represents 100,000 #Nurses and #Midwives in #Victoria#Australia has just made a statement calling for an end to violence in the Middle East, and encouraging members to donate through the union-run international aid organisation #APHEDA
The #LabourParty seems to be feeling its way towards a workable policy on the staffing aspect of the #NHSCrisis;
They seem to be exploring student debt forgiveness for #nurses & #doctors entering the service (with a form of 'golden handcuff' condition of minimum length of service)... its a relatively simple but effective route to address at least some aspects of the #NHS' problems.
A key Q. is whether this might also work in other parts of the #publicsector suffering recruitment problems?
Hmmm.... I have been thinking about this for years (having worked in #Universities for a quarter of a century)... you might find the piece I wrote for @NWBylines of interest, although I suspect we will differ on some of the points... be interested in what you think
@ChrisMayLA6 I'd like to see free public transport passes given to all public employees, so they can travel by bus, rail etc to and from work. Perhaps like in London golden pass taxi journeys could be covered to. Would radically alter transport policy. Might also reduce potholes and other death traps for cyclists...
Support #nurses and other #healthcare workers who are on #strike to improve care! We were there for the community through the scary early days of #COVID - we really need you to show up for us now!
The aspect of the #NHScrisis caused by staff shortages will only be resolved when the #workforce planning has an answer for non-completion of training; a new Nuffield Trust study shows:
only 50% of GPs who take up 'trainingships' go on to practice full-time;
In 10 yrs to 2021, the number of #doctors who took a break after first two yrs of training doubled to 70% & nearly 20% don't return;
For #Nurses, 12% drop out during training & a further 20% leave the profession within 2 yrs!
Dear fellow #healthcareworkers#nurses#doctors and everyone in #emergencymedicine , if you are gonna subscribe to the “I can’t get COVID if I never test myself”, the least you can do is wear an N-95 at work when you’re sick. It is unethical, selfish, dangerous, and frankly negligent to come to work sick and not mask up with a true respirator. To quote from a particularly garbage action flick of yesteryear — don’t be a dick, dick.
The #NHScrisis is being compounded by the failure of the #workforce plan to 'encourage' #nurses into the profession.... I mean why would you apply to be a an underpaid, overstretched nurse who the Govt. has abused & insulted who has to take on a significant student debt for the privilege?
So the devolved nations (in the UK) are those 'nations' (Wales, Northern Ireland & Scotland) who under the devolved power act, have a degree of sovereignty over policy... they have their own (partial) governments & legislatures and given issues (in this case) like the health system.
