Nurses on the picket line have warned of a rise in the number of staff who are leaving the NHS or the country in search of better pay and working conditions.
These concerns were raised outside Leeds General Infirmary today, as part of the Royal College of Nursing’s fifth day of strikes taking place across England.
Rhian Wheater, a nurse at the hospital, told Nursing Times that staffing levels across the NHS were unsafe and she found this “scary” and “frightening”.
“I’ve worked with some amazing nurses who did their job fantastically, but unfortunately none of them are there anymore”
Neeley Clifford
Ms Wheater said: “Due to real-terms pay cuts, we’ve lost a lot of nurses.
“We’ve got 47,000 vacancies within nursing, which means that we can’t keep our patients safe and the wards are chronically and seriously short staffed.
“We’re out here trying to ask for our pay to be restored to where it should be so that we can keep the wards safe.”
Ms Wheater warned that “the NHS has lost some real talent” as nurses have left the NHS to go to places “that recognise their talent and skills”.
She added: “Some people have gone to other countries that have got packages that will pay them better [and] some people have gone to private sector, doing the same job but for better pay.”
Children’s nurse Neeley Clifford echoed these concerns, and described how she was on the picket line “to protect the future of nursing”.
She told Nursing Times that she found it “heart-breaking” that nurses were feeling forced to leave the profession.
“I’ve worked with some amazing nurses who did their job fantastically, but unfortunately none of them are there anymore because of the pressures [and] because of staffing,” Ms Clifford said.
She added that while the strikes were about “so much more than money”, trusts needed to be able offer nurses a better incentive to stay.
One nurse Ms Clifford knew who had recently left the NHS was her sister, Gemma Forrest, who joined her on the picket line today in solidarity.
Ms Forrest, who decided to leave the NHS 18 months ago, told Nursing Times that it got to a point where no matter what setting she moved to, the problems “were always the same”.
She said: “You go from one to the other, you move departments thinking it will get better but it doesn’t.
“It’s the same issues wherever you go.”
Ms Forrest said she had not been able to do her job properly, due to understaffing and a lack of resources, and became “mentally and physically drained” by the demands.
Additionally, she said she struggled to progress in her career, as she was in a band where the next step was to take on a management role – something she was not interested in doing.
“It just got too much so I took a different opportunity and left the NHS,” Ms Forrest said.
“I had no option really, if I wanted to earn more money, the only option was for me to leave,” she added.
Ms Forrest joined former colleagues on the picket line outside Leeds Royal Infirmary to support them in their fight for fair pay.
She said: “I’m here to support other nurses, and my sister, and I know if I was still in the NHS I would be striking today.”
Also on the picket line today was Maxine Wade, a nursing associate, who said the way the government had treated the profession in this pay dispute was “a slap in the face”.
She warned that the government was “demonising” nurses for asking for an above-inflation pay rise, despite the fact it reflected the last decade of real-terms pay cuts.
However, she remained hopeful that the dispute would be resolved.
Ms Wade said: “We are doing amazingly, what we are doing with this industrial action is amazing, and I think that we will win we just have to keep plodding along.”
She added: “I honestly think that these strikes are the only thing that is keeping staff going at the moment, with the hope that there is some change on the horizon, and we’ve decided to take it into our own hands.
“I think we should be proud of ourselves that we’ve done this, considering the strength it takes to put yourself out there to stand up and do it.”