In my first role as a newly qualified nurse in England last year, I didn’t work a single shift where there were enough nurses on duty. Even when I wasn’t on shift, I knew there were never enough nurses. Every day, the group chat for my ward would light up with requests for people to come in on their days off.
It all got too much for me, and a lot of my colleagues. I was signing leaving cards almost weekly, it felt like a revolving door. It was a vicious cycle, nurses pushed to the edge by short staffing would quit – but there weren’t any permanent replacements being brought in, just a few agency staff picking up shifts or nurses from other areas being asked to come and support us.
It’s these working conditions that meant I could not vote for the government’s proposed 5% pay increase, offered to nurses last month in a bid to end the strikes. With the Royal College of Nursing having this afternoon announced that nurses have rejected the offer, it appears that many of my colleagues found it just as insulting as I did.
