UK
Striking nurses need to shout to make this government listen


Rebecca Roncoroni
Fri, 3 March 2023 

Striking nurses outside a hospital in Southampton. (Image: Newsquest)

I trained as a nurse in 1996 aged 29 with three young children and a husband who had been made redundant.

I received a basic bursary of around £5000 (equivalent to £12,008.23 today plus a top up to £7,600 (equivalent to 18,012.34 today) as I had three children and an unemployed husband.

There were no student loans. Under current circumstances there is no way that would have been possible.

We were seen as part of the service we were training to become part of. A little like a soldier in training (will they be paying student loans next?).

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From the first placement onwards we worked long shifts, studied long hours, commuted, sometimes daily, to QA Hospital nursing school, and Portsmouth University, and were expected to follow the Nursing and Midwifery Council Professional Code of Conduct to the letter from the very beginning.

In our Professional Code of Conduct is was drummed into us that as nurses we were accountable practitioners, which meant that if we failed to put the patients health and safety first, we would be held liable and could be struck off and charged if necessary.

So, if a doctor made a mistake on a prescription and you gave the medication without checking the prescription and patient, you were equally culpable for any consequences. It gave nurses the power to say no to policies and procedures that go against the patients best interests and in theory protected them for doing so.

Nurses are not just striking because of poor pay. Of course that is part of it. People need to be able to live in a warm house, eat good food, wear comfy shoes, rest.

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But the huge demoralisation of being forced to work in conditions that are unsafe for patients puts nurses in a terrible position.

According to their professional code of conduct and, lets face it, their humanity, they must speak up and about what is happening within their wards. Because right now, the Professional Code of Conduct is being made a mockery of by this Government.

No nurse would choose to leave patients in pain, hungry, lonely, lying in urine, and overdue their medication.

Yet every single day they are forced to prioritise the most pressing tasks only a qualified nurse can do, knowing that there is inadequate staff to wash, feed, turn, reassure and tend the patients as they should be nursed.

It is soul destroying to work in a job that you have a true vocation for and be set up to fail in your duty every single day. You wonder if by carrying on, are you colluding with a cruel system, but if you leave what will happen to the patients?

Please support to the nurses when they talk about why they are striking. They are speaking for us all. They are representing a voice that needs amplifying to the point of deafening for the Government to start listening. We need to support them in order for them to support us. They are speaking the truth to power.

I support them with every fibre of my heart.