I spent yesterday at the annual students conference of the Royal College of Nursing.
RCN student events provide two useful opportunities to the student nurse. These are:
1. The opportunity to network with other student nurses, and to understand the political aspects of nursing.
2. The opportunity to accumulate lots of free stuff.
The second of the two was deeply disappointing yesterday. No lanyards, no jiffy bags, no “Nursing Rocks!” and “Really Cool Nurses” badges. Just a certificate of attendance, a pen and a bottle of shitty hand sanitiser. Ah well, it’s the RCN Congress in April, which is the holy grail of Getting Free Crap. I left last year’s Congress with three carrier bags of cereal boxes, manicure sets, cooling leg gels, travel mugs, polaroid cameras and inflatable egg cups (Yes! Inflatable egg cups!) There were also some speeches and debates going on, but I wasn’t really paying attention.
So, in the absence of Free Crap to focus on, my attention was forced to shift to the politics of nursing.
One thing that was notable at yesterday’s student conference was the low morale among the students, especially those in their final year. Imagine spending three years of studying, struggling, accummulating debts…only to discover that you might not even get a job at the end of it. As a student in the Mental Health branch, things aren’t so bad for me as there still seem to be sufficient jobs in mental health nursing. Those in the Adult and Child branches aren’t so lucky. One woman told the conference how as a Healthcare Assistant she had taken a secondment through her NHS trust to study for registered nurse status. Three years later, the trust are telling her they may not have a registered nurse job…but they may be able to offer her a job being a Healthcare Assistant again! She (rightly, in my opinion) said that if it comes to that, she’ll be telling her trust where to shove the HCA post.
There was a strong sense at the conference of “Where did it all go wrong?” When New Labour came to power they promised to double investment in the NHS. Fair play to them, they’ve done that. They’ve behaved like good old-fashioned socialists and thrown large wads of cash at the problem. Ten years later, NHS trusts are freezing recruitment, wards are closing, operations are being cancelled. Where the hell did all the money go? Fair enough, some of it has been put to good use, increasing staff pay, reducing waiting list. A lot of it has been wasted too – on the massive rip-off that is the Private Finance Initiative, on paying more for drugs than our European counterparts, on the ridiculously inefficient bureacracy of the NHS. How did we get to this state of affairs?
I hope at least some of you turned out for the NHS Day of Action today. I must confess I wasn’t there myself, as the Day of Action was confined to England and Northern Ireland. Apparently this is because the Welsh Assembly and Scottish Parliament have been very supportive of the NHS staff, and they didn’t want to reduce the effectiveness of behind-the-scenes lobbying by alienating them with public protests.
Still, the NHS’s “best year ever”, eh? Thanks for the below-inflation pay rise, by the way.
I still can’t get over the fact that many newly qualified nurses might not get a job since almost all wards complain of being short staffed. The adult branch students say the same. I know there is a similar piece of quackery going on with SHO’s or FY2′s or whatever they are called.
It is bizarre. I am trying to not be too smug since my year have been promised a job at the end of qualifying because I know this could change.
And BOO for the lack of freebies. I am glad I didn’t bother going all the way down there for hand sanitiser!
…How does THAT work? There’s a nursing shortage everywhere, how can new nurses not be finding jobs? By what mechanism is this happening?
Seriously. Inquiring minds want to know. Health care (and nursing) is broken here, too, just broken differently. I’d like to understand, so I know what we want to avoid.
/jo
p.s. Hand sanitizer gifts = lame. What is an egg cup and why does one need one that inflates?
Rosey:
Yeah, recruitment of junior doctors is completely screwed up too. As I understand it, it’s because of their new computerised MMC/MTAS system that’s supposed to handle the recruitment process. By all accounts it’s turning into a complete disaster and thousands of junior medics are staring unemployment in the face.
Oh, and come to the RCN Congress! You’ll get loads of freebies there!
justcallmejo
It isn’t that there isn’t a *need* for nurses. Plenty of hospitals are short of nursing staff. It’s just that with many NHS trusts undergoing a financial deficit, they simply don’t have the cash to recruit nurses for those hospitals.
This is already beginning to lead to plenty of newly-qualified, highly-motivated nurses and doctors either leaving the profession or going abroad, after having spent years studying and struggling at the taxpayer’s expense. Personally, I’m looking at the possibility of going into the private sector when I qualify.
Jo, if it’s any consolation, you may find a lot of British nurses heading over the Atlantic to help you out with your nursing shortage over there.
When and where is the RCN congress? Please remind me nearer the time too!
Congress is in Harrogate on April 17th. Some universities are running coach parties down there.
I would need to wait to see my timetable. It is highly unlikely my Uni would organise a bus for that. (I could rant more, but I better not!)
Interesting post Zed, like a bit of politics, but disagree that New Labour have behaved like old fashioned socialists in their treatment of the nhs, particularly as a lot of the money has gone on middle management, IT, and very little on wage increases, better working conditions…. etc
There is an interesting quote from Tony Benn regarding five questions of power which goes like this:
“1. What power have you got?
2. Where did you get it from?
3. In whose interest do you exercise it?
4. To whom are you accountable?
5. How can we get rid of you?
Only democracy gives us that right. That is why no-one in power likes democracy and that is why every generation must struggle to win it and keep it, including me and you, here and now.”
Personally, i think public displays and demonstrations against the governments’ strategy on the nhs is essential. Inaction by nhs workers, students and patients will do little.
Did anyone go on the NHS demonstrations on Saturday?
I used to go on a few protest marches with the Stop the War Coalition around the time of the Iraq War, but I quit the STWC because I started to realise that I loathed George Galloway even more than Tony Blair. There’s something about movements led by a moustached guy with a chronic case of Short Man Syndrome and a fondness for ranting speeches in front of mass rallies….well, historically they don’t end well.
I’ve been trying to work out how many people demonstrated on Saturday. There used to be a formula that worked well for calculating numbers of marchers when I was in the STWC. The formula is this:
The actual number of marchers is half the number of people the Stop the War Coalition said it was, or alternatively one-third the number of people the Socialist Workers Party said it was.
The Socialist Worker website is saying 10,000 people marched in Enfield. So that would be 3,300 people then.