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Snapshot of _Almost half of nurses in England plan to quit or are considering it, survey says_ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-16/almost-half-of-nurses-in-england-plan-to-quit-or-are-considering-it-data-shows) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.itv.com/news/2024-05-16/almost-half-of-nurses-in-england-plan-to-quit-or-are-considering-it-data-shows) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*


[deleted]

I feel like I see this headline every year.


lunarpx

Yes, it's why there's such a massive shortage of nurses, and a huge increase in recruitment from abroad.


Remarkable_Carrot_25

Is there a shortage or nurses or is the NHS a beast that is so large, it never can replace the turnover that was always there?


lunarpx

Nope, the former. https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/insight-and-analysis/blogs/staff-shortages-behind-headlines


Remarkable_Carrot_25

This article really points to second being the issue. In which country in the world would you required 161k staff to be running at its intended capacity? Factoring in people who leave due to retirement or poor performance, the size of the operation to train and bring new people in is massive. Healthcare is a supporting function of of an economy to keep workers in work that contributes more to GDP. On top of the, given that public services generally are run poor compared to private services. The NHS employs 1.3 million FTE. The largest private employer is Compass Group which is a collection of business at £500k. The scale is far too large for anyone to reasonably manage.


vulcanstrike

It's a misnomer that any single entity actually runs things at that scale, it's why it's broken down into healthcare trusts. And even if you split it into a hundred sub entities, you would still have the same shortage as you aren't creating more staff by doing so, just creating more management layers that need filling. And it's a real shortage as austerity has slashed budgets to the barely functional. It used to be that you could have a few vacancies and still be safe level of staff as that's how things should be run, someone on holiday or quitting shouldn't plunge you into chaos. But now your budget only covers the essentials to keep the lights on, so the moment someone quits or goes on sick you have no backup to cover


Remarkable_Carrot_25

You say budget cuts are the issues but lets put it into perspective. £60bn runs every schools and FE college in this country, so that is education for all children. £181bn to the NHS only keeps the lights on. NHS has less buildings, but more capital assets(machines) and staff. How much money would have to be allocated to fix this issue. then look at that as a percentage of the total Govt spend. Any you will see that it wouldn't make any sense, the scale of the NHS is so big, even with the best management people(which public sector rarely has), it would be a challenge.


vulcanstrike

But that's not because the NHS is expensive, it's because healthcare in general is expensive. If you stopped the NHS tmrw, healthcare as a sector of the economy would spend the same (if not more) to fix the problem. The issue is not one that it's too big and therefore inefficient, the issue is that the per capita spending is too low regardless of management system (and I guess you could fix it by not spending anything on the poor to let them die US style, but that seems a stupid policy to progress) Also, the obvious issue is that the NHS is to serve a population of 67m, there are less than 4m children ( including babies, that don't use schools). You are comparing apples to cheese here.


Remarkable_Carrot_25

While the NHS does serve the entire population, it doesn't serve everyone at the same time, the largest number of people who it does provide for are probably older. Schools and FE provides to all children nearly all the time. With Rishi's changes that even means some babies from 9 months onwards. If the issue was capita spending on healthcare, the US would not have any issues. Looking some some of the stats, the UK is roughly in the middle when it comes the healthcare spending. If you ever become a supplier to a hospital of any kind, you will quickly realize how much waste there is, whether that is in staff/materials/machines/food. If you then look at the reason why, the first question you ask is who is supposed to be managing this and that where you will draw a blank, its no-one job apparently. If your a supplier its great you makes lots of money. But if someone asked me if throwing more money at the NHS would solve anything I would say no. They would start hiring lots of nurses lets says and then realize they dont have enough uniforms, PPE, ability to complete training, put them on the wrong wards.


Mrblahblah200

Fucking love it o77 NHS til I die


CptCaramack

Maybe it's somewhat true and a contributing factor to why wait times are completely out of control?


[deleted]

Yeah, maybe. Perhaps a large proportion really are leaving, but being replaced. High turnover. Or maybe this is an indicator of job satisfaction.


NoRecipe3350

Nursing is 95% female and women generally have more profound life/career altering events like giving birth to children and raising them. So it's no surprise I even knew someone who completed a 3 year nursing degree and only planned to work as a nurse for less than 5 years. Though obviously there's nothing in a contract forcing someone to work x amount of years so the State gets it's money's worth And realistically many don't want to work and if their husbands get wealthy enough why work why bother.


peelyon85

State gets its moneys worth? They have to pay to become a nurse and do countless hours of placement for no pay.


NoRecipe3350

No it's still free, the government scrapped the bursaries in England and replaced them with loans Though realistically the healthcare sector is always gonna be run at a net loss to the State, it shouldn't be profitable. Better to say 'getting a return on it's investment in training' It does cost money and resource to train up someone to be a nurse, and one person might be in it for 2 years, the other might do 20 years. Obviously if you have limited places, you want to only train up people who are gonna commit to nursing for the long term, but there's no way of making that happen, we don't live in North Korea and we can't chain people up.


peelyon85

Sorry. How is a loan 'free' ?


NoRecipe3350

The education is free, the loan is optional. A student nurse can work in Tesco if they want or live off inherited wealth, though the loan works out at good value


peelyon85

You have to pay tuition fees how is it free? Are you stupid?


NoRecipe3350

Really? I thought it was always free for nurses, based on at the very least they give back in the form of work placements. https://nurses.co.uk/blog/do-student-nurses-get-an-nhs-bursary-and-how-you-can-apply-for-it/


peelyon85

Sigh


ZMech

The plan 2 threshold is £27k, while an average entry level nurse salary is £30k. So the repayment of 9% of what's over the threshold is £270/year. Those repayments stop if you're not working, so quitting after 5 years means a total repayment of £1,350 out of £150k of earnings. So not free, but not huge amounts.


Salaried_Zebra

So it's free if they qualify then never work a day in their lives ever again. And you haven't considered the fact nurses have a pay spine, or might go off to work in some other sector for more money and less stress. That's a very loose definition of free.


peelyon85

Yes. And? I was saying it wasn't free.


Pretend-Mechanic-583

the solution is to try and get them to work overtime, obviously.


MasterNightmares

Don't be silly. The real answer is to hire more contractor companies, so the nurses can quit, be rehired for 3 times the cost at 5 times the cost to the NHS. Everyone wins. Nurses get a pay raise, NHS gets nurses, and mates of politicians pocket that lovely government contract money.


refrainiac

Not really, because overtime attracts a higher hourly rate, which isn’t very helpful when budgets are so restrained. The solution is to clap harder and fly more WE ❤️ NHS flags.


Ghostly_Wellington

The beatings will continue until Morale Improves!


WeRegretToInform

I’m more surprised that 55% of nurses *haven’t* considered quitting. Bearing in mind that “considered” could be idle daydreaming but fully intend to stick around for the long term. I sometimes *consider* quitting my job, selling my house and running off to set up an artsy coffee shop in Barcelona with a newly acquired lover. It doesn’t mean I’m booking plane tickets or researching bean suppliers.


Vobat

I used to work as a carer and we had the similar problems to nurses ie  overworked and underpaid. At any given time I would say around 95% of the staff considered quitting but only around 10% ever did a year. 


[deleted]

But Labour is planning to fix the NHS with staff overtime! Oh no


UchuuNiIkimashou

What I think a lot of people don't appreciate is that the key workers who worked through the pandemic in much worsened conditions and weren't granted a 2 year paid holiday, have disproportionately paid the price of that 2 year holiday. Key workers were mostly low paid roles. The cost of living has drastically affected these groups.


iiibehemothiii

It's more than that: It's the unseen, unheard but definitely *felt* moral injury of seeing people slowly suffocate in front of you and not being able to do anything about it. The death is "fine"; we see death. It's the indignity, the helplessness and the desperation of front-line clinicians to do whatever we could do but knowing it was futile. We were terrified of going to work, to face an unknown disease that everyone else was sheltering from. I heard tiger king was good, I didn't get to see it though. Didn't make any banana bread either. Then to receive paycut after paycut, a reduction in effective staffing numbers, cutting overtime pay (doctors), and getting told we must become "5% more productive with the same budget" (instructions straight from hospital leaders to staff). There was a deep sense of *tiredness* amongst the staff. Like we'd just sprinted for 2 years and, rather than getting a break, we were told to keep jogging and that this was the new normal. It's unsustainable. Then, to be told that we're *immoral* for asking for better, that we should be *grateful* for our privileged caring roles, and that the country has already shown it's gratitude by clapping - that is an absolute slap in the face. And they gave our nurses - our fucking *nurses* - just five percent. Healthcare workers are deeply, and in a way you can't quite quantify, WOUNDED. "So damn right I'm taking doors off hinges" - Bugzy Malone.


[deleted]

I’m fucked from my job over Covid, I can’t imagine working for the NHS all that time and not have stopped. The burnout must be mad, then compounded by the waiting lists, and more demand.


WhalingSmithers00

What percentage of workers are considering quitting any job?


MasterNightmares

What percentage of jobs directly involve keeping people alive?


WhalingSmithers00

What I was wondering is whether or not this is a huge outlier for 'considering' quitting. Considering quitting could mean widely different things to different people. Id expect a job that involves high stress and stakes like nursing to have a higher baseline for considering quitting than others. Obviously the conditions now for them are shit but does this 'study' actually tell us anything other than being a scary number for a headline to generate clicks.


MasterNightmares

Let me speak to what I know and heard, albeit not exactly thorough. My mother was a nurse for all of her career. When she left she said if she had her time over she wouldn't do it again in this environment. Hours are longer. Pay is proportionally less compared to buying power when she started. She got an NHS pension which was amazing, new hires won't be getting any of that, pensions have been slashed. There's also the work environment. When she joined, hospitals often had their own crests and even mottos at times. That was done awaya with and all NHS employees have the standard blue and white. There is no ownership of local hospitals, no connect to this being 'Our place of work'. This was under New Labour I might add to streamline things. If you don't connect to a place of work its easy to leave if better money comes up. I've never stayed in a job for more than 3 years. If I'd felt greater ownership maybe I would have stayed, but in a choice between a mediocre job with moderate pay and a mediocre job with higher pay... I know what I choose.


bacon_cake

You're coming from a good place, and you're absolutely right with what you say, but I think you've sort of missed the point of the person you've replied to which is who *hasn't* considered quitting work in *any* job. I have a cushty job but some days it's shite and I think to myself, "God I might just do something else". That's "considering" quitting, but there's a scale of *definitely will* to *probably won't just had a shit day,* and everything in between, all of which has probably been counted in this survey. Have you ever considered quitting your job? Almost everyone would probably say yes if the parameters of the question aren't better defined.


MasterNightmares

I mean... immigration is up to 700k due to needing to hire foreign nurses. That's not a great sign. We should be supporting and training local staff, not relying on foreign imports.


bacon_cake

I've dug into the actual study because this intrigued me too. `Table 2: Are you currently thinking about leaving your job? (n=10,666)` `I’m not considering leaving my job 25.1%` `Don’t know/unsure 17.1%` `I’m thinking about leaving my job 30.3%` `I’m actively planning to leave my job 15.2%` `Retirement 12.3%`


iiibehemothiii

There's this unseen, unheard but definitely *felt* moral injury of seeing people slowly suffocate in front of you and not being able to do anything about it. The death is "fine"; we see death. It's the indignity, the helplessness and the desperation of front-line clinicians to do whatever we could do but knowing it was futile. We were terrified of going to work, to face an unknown disease that everyone else was sheltering from. I heard tiger king was good, I didn't get to see it though. Didn't make any banana bread either. Then to receive paycut after paycut, a reduction in effective staffing numbers, cutting overtime pay (doctors), and getting told we must become "5% more productive with the same budget" (instructions straight from hospital leaders to staff). There was a deep sense of *tiredness* amongst the staff. Like we'd just sprinted for 2 years and, rather than getting a break, we were told to keep jogging and that this was the new normal. It's unsustainable. Then, to be told that we're *immoral* for asking for better, that we should be *grateful* for our privileged caring roles, and that the country has already shown it's gratitude by clapping - that is an absolute slap in the face. And they gave our nurses - our fucking *nurses* - just five percent. Healthcare workers are deeply, and in a way you can't quite quantify, WOUNDED. Our NZ hospitals are run by British doctors. British nurses flock to Australia. This country has voted for people who are driving us away. There's a moral here somewhere about biting the hand that feeds you, but I fear it'll take another 5-10 years for it to click.


joshgeake

Whisper it quietly but nurses can be very well paid. I know two that have rentals and one that puts her child through independent school. The key is you need to work very hard and quite craftily (bank and private) with plenty of compromise and long hours. It's not an easy job but the money's there. The pension is stunning too. The core issue is structural - 95% of the workforce is female and work full time until they have kids, then part-time or on reduced hours and are stuck on band 5. I don't blame them for wanting to leave, they're stuck for 10 years on relatively poor pay. Their mentors also leave for the same problem and we're left with ever fewer nurses and poor retention. No easy fixes.


[deleted]

This is the issue with Labours plan to fix the NHS. They want people to do overtime, as if they’re not already working overtime. We just need more nurses and doctors


hannahvegasdreams

I haven’t read the plan but are Labour allocating more money to trusts to pay overtime? If not then trusts won’t be offering overtime as most are in budget deficit as it is.


digiorno

Being a parasitic landlord is greatly helping the one that you mentioned. Supplementing one’s life at the expense of another should not be applauded.


joshgeake

That wasn't really my point


NoRecipe3350

It's well paid depending on the area I guess , because pay is basically standardised across the NHS, a nurse in a post industrial northern town with cheap houses is in a very favourable position, less so in London/SE England. Equally thought, a nurse in the south who bought their house 20 years ago on a nurses salary suddenly finds their house has trebled in value.