With Student Nurse reading more tales of students being left without a Nursing job on qualifying, he began to think about the future which he has to consider. There are a number of factors which are causing such problems, and you can read plenty of that subject in the media. But Student Nurse began thinking of the future when considering compounded errors. Much how a mistake at the beginning of a long equation will have disastrous consequences on the final figure arrived at, he wonders of the ramifications which today’s losses to the nursing workforce will have. At the moment, a quick scan over the classified in Nursing Standard shows positions vacant for the senior positions for senior Staff Nurses, Sisters/Charge Nurse. This is very nice for the lucky people who can go for such a position. Then the Band 5, D grade jobs...3 possible positions for a Registered General Nurse (RGN).
This is not intended to be a rant on the current status for newly qualified nurses, but a consideration for the future. Consider for a moment the Nursing echelons like a long pipe and the staff water flowing through it. Newly qualified staff come directly from the tap, and the senior posts are the end. As you progress through the ranks, the further you travel along the pipe. However, imagine there was a kink in that pipe. New water cannot flow in as high a quantity as it could. For a while, this only affects a small area, but as the effect of the lack of water kicks in, the greater the systemic loss can be felt. Eventually this will be transmitted to the end, and the flow stopped. If this happens to the extent that there are excessive shortness of newly qualified RGN's, when considering the facts that students face bleak prospects coupled with the prospects of large number of retirements to set in within the upcoming years, and add the extraneous variable of barring foreign recruitment student nurse has reached a very worrying fact: Unless there is a change to the recruitment soon, there will not be enough Nurses to fill the posts and a reduced number of experienced staff.
People need money and will not wait forever to get a job in their field, and newly graduated students will soon look to other fields to work if nursing cannot provide. Few who leave may come back. The college student may also feel the pinch from the cut in training posts, assuming they even choose to apply for nursing and not another course. Some have said to Student Nurse to go abroad. He would like New Zealand or Canada as places to emigrate to, but he reminds them of the one fact companies who advertise for overseas jobs state: 2 years post registration experience essential. Trusts may need their books balancing, but wards still require nurses. Form filling may look nice, but it will not help a patient to know that despite there being no nurses to administer their pain medication, all the forms have been filled in so everything is hunky-dory.
Will this system ever change? Well, consider this: the UK went into Iraq despite unprecedented levels of public opposition to the war. Despite the howls of protest, nurses look set to have a staggered 1.9% pay rise. How much chance will getting a few thousand extra nurses by 2014 have?
This is not intended to be a rant on the current status for newly qualified nurses, but a consideration for the future. Consider for a moment the Nursing echelons like a long pipe and the staff water flowing through it. Newly qualified staff come directly from the tap, and the senior posts are the end. As you progress through the ranks, the further you travel along the pipe. However, imagine there was a kink in that pipe. New water cannot flow in as high a quantity as it could. For a while, this only affects a small area, but as the effect of the lack of water kicks in, the greater the systemic loss can be felt. Eventually this will be transmitted to the end, and the flow stopped. If this happens to the extent that there are excessive shortness of newly qualified RGN's, when considering the facts that students face bleak prospects coupled with the prospects of large number of retirements to set in within the upcoming years, and add the extraneous variable of barring foreign recruitment student nurse has reached a very worrying fact: Unless there is a change to the recruitment soon, there will not be enough Nurses to fill the posts and a reduced number of experienced staff.
People need money and will not wait forever to get a job in their field, and newly graduated students will soon look to other fields to work if nursing cannot provide. Few who leave may come back. The college student may also feel the pinch from the cut in training posts, assuming they even choose to apply for nursing and not another course. Some have said to Student Nurse to go abroad. He would like New Zealand or Canada as places to emigrate to, but he reminds them of the one fact companies who advertise for overseas jobs state: 2 years post registration experience essential. Trusts may need their books balancing, but wards still require nurses. Form filling may look nice, but it will not help a patient to know that despite there being no nurses to administer their pain medication, all the forms have been filled in so everything is hunky-dory.
Will this system ever change? Well, consider this: the UK went into Iraq despite unprecedented levels of public opposition to the war. Despite the howls of protest, nurses look set to have a staggered 1.9% pay rise. How much chance will getting a few thousand extra nurses by 2014 have?
