Don’t annoy the nurses: why ministers must take note
Posted 16 December 2022 - 16:52
Doctors learn early on stay on the right side of nursing staff. Ministers would do well to follow suit and heed the profession’s pleas on pay and safe staffing
As one medic put it when nursing staff went on strike: the government needs to learn what doctors learn early – never annoy the nurses.
The industrial action showcased the resourcefulness and determination of a profession under unrelenting pressure. For this, it – you – should be proud.
A dispute about pay… and so, so much more
While the industrial action was over fair pay, it was about so much more too. It amplified the litany of issues affecting nursing and the neglect of the profession and health and social care services by governments.
Chronic short-staffing and the implications for patient safety are, sadly, not new but nurses were able to hold the nation’s attention to highlight these, and often to sympathetic passers-by at picket lines too.
Striking community hospital nurses I spoke to on a picket in Bristol told of the pressure and stress of having to cover gaps in acute surgical care, and of their anxiety about their regular patients’ nursing needs being left unmet as a consequence.
Staffing levels are no one’s idea of safe
Newly qualified nurses too regularly talk of single-handedly running wards and this year draws to a close with the sad story of a nurse who walked out on her 30-year career after being left by herself to care for 19 acute patients. No reasonable person would claim any of these situations is safe.
Yet nurses have papered over cracks for too long – with understaffing, under-resourcing, the lack of beds and even PPE – but now those cracks are too wide to keep on covering up.
Ministers can ease this chronic condition by listening to nurses and working with them, not against them. After all, these are imaginative, innovative professionals who are experts at devising solutions – even the doctors know that.