Student nurses to protest over pay abolition

steddyeddy

Rodin wrote: »

I'd say you're spot on. Two years max

Yes because I want people with less training looking after me when im sick, in fact the next time im in the hospital ill insist on the nurse who dropped out two years early!

hatrickpatrick

feelingstressed wrote: »

If you are confident you can do the same work as a qualified nurse after three years then there is no need to have nurses doing a four year degree so.

End the course at three years and then job hunting begins.
You won't have a honours degree but going by your posts, you don't need it to do the job.

.....
I never said they did all of the same work. That's why they don't get paid a full wage. But the idea of making them work those hours for nothing at all is ludicrous and disgusting.

It's also impossible. Ye who oppose paying them have utterly failed to address how they're supposed to live on nothing, especially if they've moved away from home and are relying on a part time job to pay for college and living. Getting a loan is the only solution which has been proposed. During this credit crunch? Great idea. You should be working for our outgoing government, this is exactly the kind of genius thinking they're looking for.

mikemac

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

.....
But the idea of making them work those hours for nothing at all is ludicrous and disgusting.

The Department of Health and Children decided to phase out this payment over the next four years and abolish it altogether in 2015.

The Sunday Business Post states the payment will be phased out over four years.
Other posters reckon payment is gone and student nurses will work for nothing.

Lots of misinformation here, someone is wrong and somebody is correct.
If the INO and its highly paid Liam Doran want to earn some money they might get their message out there.
It's not here on this thread

ArtSmart

sad.

i like student nurses.

i really, really do.

Trog

Coppers will suffer terribly.

Lumen

The reason nursing is generally badly paid (in whatever country) is supply and demand - it's a popular profession in which it's easy to fill places. I don't agree with the general tabloid-style fawning over the profession - they're just people, some are brilliant and others are lazy and useless.

However, in the short term it is completely unacceptable to change the conditions in such a dramatic way for students mid-way through their education/training who would have been budgeting for that pay. Not sure exactly what "phased in means", surely better to just introduce the new rules for the next fresh intake? Sounds gutless and weaselly.

There are clear consequences for these changes over the long term, and those consequences are that you eliminate a bunch of people who cannot be supported for that extra year by their parents, partners or debt, and it'll become more of a profession for rich kids who don't have to look after themselves. The quality will go down.

With a wider economic view, IMO unpaid internships are bad for the economy as they encourage wasteful practices. If you don't have to pay someone you're not going use them efficiently. We don't need more examples of this to encourage employers to exploit people (FWIW I employ interns and they get paid).

gubernaculum

Considering how utterly fecked the HSE are for junior doctors at the moment, I doubt they're deliberately gonna let that happen in another facet of heathcare. Alienating nurses from working in the country in which they've trained is amazingly short sighted, particularly when they've been trained to a high standard of care. My sister is in college at the moment (midwife) and is only going to get 50% of the pay she expected to get when commencing her degree by the time she gets paid. Subsequent years are getting nothing. At the moment she isn't even in final year but spends one term working up to 14 hour shifts delivering babies (obviously with supervision) unpaid. Yes, it's on-site training, but it's a lot, lot more stressful, time consuming and high stakes than most other intern type jobs considering you're expected to study as well. You're also on rotations so the cost of living expenses and travel around the country are incurred. It's not an easy life and nurses aren't exactly paid that well to begin with so personally think they deserve our support.

Padraig Mor

Lumen wrote: »

The reason nursing is generally badly paid (in whatever country)

????????

Nursing is incredibly well paid in Ireland. Average nurse pay (before last years PS cuts) was the bones of €60k a year. Graduates straight out of college were starting on about €40k first day in the door. They might whinge about night work, but they get well compensated for it (along with a myriad of other allowances which increase their base pay approx 25%).

Hogzy

Padraig Mor wrote: »

????????

Nursing is incredibly well paid in Ireland. Average nurse pay (before last years PS cuts) was the bones of €60k a year. Graduates straight out of college were starting on about €40k first day in the door. They might whinge about night work, but they get well compensated for it (along with a myriad of other allowances which increase their base pay approx 25%).

I can guarantee 100% you cannot show a source for this. Or else your soure is someone "you know" who gets paid this amount. No fresh graduate starts on 40k in nursing unless they end up doing 70-80hrs a week with overtime, and if thats the case then they deserve that sort of money.

The sheer amount of hear say in this thread has reached epic proportions. No doubt the majority of it is BS

Lumen

Padraig Mor wrote: »

????????

Nursing is incredibly well paid in Ireland. Average nurse pay (before last years PS cuts) was the bones of €60k a year. Graduates straight out of college were starting on about €40k first day in the door.

Source?

These suggest not...

http://healthcare.monster.ie/articles/nursing_salary/
http://www.irishjobs.ie/forumww/SalarySurvey.aspx?SalarySurveyID=481&BannorID=a9f10da8&BZoneID=14&ParentID=75&CID=160

Padraig Mor

Lumen wrote: »

Source?

These suggest not...

http://healthcare.monster.ie/articles/nursing_salary/
http://www.irishjobs.ie/forumww/SalarySurvey.aspx?SalarySurveyID=481&BannorID=a9f10da8&BZoneID=14&ParentID=75&CID=160

Probably because they're from 2002.........

Hogzy wrote: »

I can guarantee 100% you cannot show a source for this. Or else your soure is someone you know who gets paid this amount. No fresh graduate starts on 40k in nursing unless they end up doing 70-80hrs a week with overtime, and if thats the case then they deserve that sort of money.

The sheer amount of hear say in this thread has reached epic proportions. No doubt the majority of it is BS

I think you'll find your post is BS. TBH I think I underestimated their pay! Average nusing pay in 2005 was €56000 per full time nurse. This is an average figure for all nursing pay - not an exception. It will have increased substantially since then until 2010; you'll have to check pay agreements to be precise but I reckon that puts average pay at well over €60k at end 2009; probably close to €70k. It will then have reduced last year by approx 7.5% due to the PS pay cuts. remember this includes a whole host of allowances they like to keep quiet about.

Staff nurse pay scale starts at over €30k (according to their union, who should know). The union themselves state that nurses on average add 25% to their base pay through overtime, allowances etc, giving a figure of approx €38k (or €40k until prior to the PS pay cuts) the very first day they walk in the door.



The blinkered hysteria over nurses in Ireland is utterly bizarre as is the obsession with characterising them as low paid (despite clear evidence to the contrary) and worked off their feet. It is an extremely well paid profession, with absolute job security in most cases until recently. Abuse of sick leave is also rampant according to the HSE. While working in A+E is no doubt tough, this only accounts for a small portion of nurses. Most are 'on the wards' where things are generally rather easier, particularly since the advent of care assistants in the last decade, who now do most of the traditional 'dirty' work nurses used to do.

mikemac

A graduate nurse commencing employment for the first time in the Irish public health services will earn a basic starting salary of €31,233. On average each nurse can earn an additional 23% in allowances and overtime.

That's great money for any graduate job in Ireland

LETHAL LADY

http://www.inmo.ie/INMOPage_9_35.aspx


Sorry Padraig but I think you are wrong.

First time using a link hope it works.

Hogzy

Padraig Mor wrote: »

I think you'll find your post is BS. TBH I think I underestimated their pay! Average nusing pay in 2005 was €56000 per full time nurse. This is an average figure for all nursing pay - not an exception. It will have increased substantially since then until 2010; you'll have to check pay agreements to be precise but I reckon that puts average pay at well over €60k at end 2009; probably close to €70k. It will then have reduced last year by approx 7.5% due to the PS pay cuts. remember this includes a whole host of allowances they like to keep quiet about.

Staff nurse pay scale starts at over €30k (according to their union, who should know). The union themselves state that nurses on average add 25% to their base pay through overtime, allowances etc, giving a figure of approx €38k (or €40k until prior to the PS pay cuts) the very first day they walk in the door.

If you got your figure by adding up the three types of nurses then you are completely mis guided. For every 10-15 staff nurses there is one CNM. Then for every 10-15 CNM's there is one director of nursing. So your average figure are WAYYYYYYYY off.

As your link shows the average wage for a staff nurse is 31,000 above you said they get paid 40,000 in the door - A sign that you havnt a clue what you are on about and you are over exagerating your figures

Padraig Mor wrote: »

care assistants in the last decade, who now do most of the traditional 'dirty' work nurses used to do.

Padraig you havnt a clue what they do. You are making these statement with absolutly no experience of the work a nurse does. Are you basing your opinions on one visit you may have had to hospital or what?

feelingstressed wrote: »

That's great money for any graduate job in Ireland

The reason being is because it takes alot longer to go up the pay ladder, A staff nurse could be in the same job for 10yrs and never go above 40,000. Also the student nurse has 3 years of unpaid placement done and it now looks to be a 4th year also so the starting salary is to make up for that.

smash

Lads, I think you're all missing the point of the article...

There's going to be a student nurse protest - it's is going to a pussyfest!

Conor Bourke

http://www.hseea.ie/subNav.aspx?pid=payConditions

HSE pay scales, there for all the world to see. Zero speculation, zero bull****. Make of it what you will.

As for care assistants doing the dirty work... well I have worked with care assistants/house-keeping staff who refused to clean up spilled bodily fluids as they "weren't covered", it wasn't in their job description!

There are plenty of bad nurses, Irish and otherwise. The idea of training us to degree level was to move us along to a profession that works on best practice, as opposed to the old "apprenticeship" model where you learned by routine and never raised an objection to questionable nursing practices (of which there were many). To limit the training to two years min would just churn out half-baked, half-educated half-wits, although I reckon the whole degree shift has thrown up quite a number of them too, plenty of people who didn't get the points for teaching/physio/whatever and have no interest in being an actual nurse but figured it was going to be an easy Science degree with an almost guaranteed job at the end of it all.

It was never going to be easy to reach the happy medium but I do think that making nursing a degree subject was a good thing overall. More evidence based practice= better patient outcomes (oh and before you jump down my throat about making nursing into an academic profession at the expense of caring, from day one we were encouraged to nurture and explore our experiences, intuition and critically examine how we worked, how we felt, how that made the patients feel and what we could have done differently)

Lumen

Alaskimo-cake wrote: »

http://www.hseea.ie/subNav.aspx?pid=payConditions

OK, so about 30-40k depending on where on the scale you are.

It's neither penury nor riches.

Buttercup18

I am a current nursing intern, on the same ward I was in as a supernumery student before christmas. Before I became an intern each day the staff comprised of 3 staff nurses, the ward sister, a care assistant and me, returning as an intern student the everyday staff consists of 2 staff nurses, the ward sister, a care assistant and me. I get my own six patients everyday and to say that I get help or supervision is a joke. The only help I get is with my medication as legally I am unable to give out medication yet. So apart from this I am solely on my own - with dressings, pre and post operative patients, catherisations, removings stitches, clips and everything else that is entailed in a staff nurses workload. I work 8am until 9pm with a total of one and a half hours break all day. My contract states that I am not allowed to work outside the hospital and so I am solely tied to the hospital. The pay cut is on top of all of the rest of the pay cuts which have been imposed by the outgoing government and for me it will mean an additional 4 percent out of my wages which mean a total of 210 deductions per two weeks. This cut and the plan to phase out paying student nurses is ridiculious and I think it will take something as drastic as a strike for the government and HSE to realise the value of the 4th year students. By no means do I want to go on strike as I love my job and don't want to go on strike but it may well be whats needed. The fact that when I qualify I wont get work in Ireland is sad enough without hitting those who are training aswel.

Padraig Mor

Hogzy wrote: »

If you got your figure by adding up the three types of nurses then you are completely mis guided. For every 10-15 staff nurses there is one CNM. Then for every 10-15 CNM's there is one director of nursing. So your average figure are WAYYYYYYYY off.

As your link shows the average wage for a staff nurse is 31,000 above you said they get paid 40,000 in the door - A sign that you havnt a clue what you are on about and you are over exagerating your figures

You really need to take off your blinkers and actually READ my post (and read further than just the first few paragraphs of my link). Your point re CNMs makes no sense and isn't even a point. My link does not show an average nurse wage of 31k - this was the starting salary (before allowances) in 2005. I have clearly explained the €40k starting figure in my previous post - if you can't figure out basic maths, there's not much I can do for you TBH. What exaggeration? The link clearly states "an average annual salary of in excess of €56,000 per.....nurse" (in 2005). You are also ignoring the rather pertinent point that these are not MY figures - these are direct from the HSE who actually PAY the nurses and therefore presumably know how much they earn!

Padraig you havnt a clue what they do. You are making these statement with absolutly no experience of the work a nurse does. Are you basing your opinions on one visit you may have had to hospital or what?

I'm basing my statement on a decade working (in a 'frontline' role) in a major hospital in a timeframe spanning the introduction of care assistants. How about you?



You see, this what I was talking about - the absolute blinkered mentality of so many Irish people re nurses. No matter how much it's made clear to them that nursing is now a bloody good, well paid job, they simply refuse to recognise reality and still promote an image of nursing long since gone - low paid and **** work. See Hogzy above - he won't even accept salary figures from the people who pay the nurses :rolleyes:

Roger Marbles

littlemutha wrote: »

oh my god! you actually need a reality check!!!! Lazy and overpaid? you need to take a good look at what you have posted and think about what you are saying. I have never ever witnessed a lazy nurse and have had plenty of contact with the healthcare system, nurses are the glue that holds the health service together, they don't have a chance to be lazy,

I've worked as a HCA in the health service for quite some time now and I can definitely stand by my remarks. I don't need to think about anything seeing as I have seen this first hand time and time again.

Getting paid money for training days off and then to refuse to perform tasks that they are trained for and that other nurses in Europe routinely do is a joke. Leaving most of the manual labour for HCAs and sitting down eating chocolates and answering the phone sounds like laziness to me.

The glue that holds the health service together?....give me a break.

mikom

Roger Marbles wrote: »

I've worked as a HCA in the health service for quite some time now and I can definitely stand by my remarks. I don't need to think about anything seeing as I have seen this first hand time and time again.

Getting paid money for training days off and then to refuse to perform tasks that they are trained for and that other nurses in Europe routinely do is a joke. Leaving most of the manual labour for HCAs and sitting down eating chocolates and answering the phone sounds like laziness to me.

The glue that holds the health service together?....give me a break.

Anyone for a bit of Killers?

♫
Jealousy, turning saints into the sea
Swimming through sick lullabies
Choking on your alibis
But it's just the price I pay
♫

Conor Bourke

Roger Marbles wrote: »

I've worked as a HCA in the health service for quite some time now and I can definitely stand by my remarks. I don't need to think about anything seeing as I have seen this first hand time and time again.

Getting paid money for training days off and then to refuse to perform tasks that they are trained for and that other nurses in Europe routinely do is a joke. Leaving most of the manual labour for HCAs and sitting down eating chocolates and answering the phone sounds like laziness to me.

The glue that holds the health service together?....give me a break.

Oh by the by, I was a care assistant for three years before I did nursing, never saw nurses sitting eating chocolates and answering phones while the care assistants did the work.
If I saw anything, it was the opposite. I was 17 when I started as a HCA, and on more than one occasion I was warned by older colleagues that my enthusiasm was unnecessary and it was suggested in a most passive agressive manner that I should stop showing up the others.

bozley

I have to admit that as a student nurse some qualified staff do sit back and let you do all the work. I can also say that I've seen some hca's who are better than nurses and some who are lazy and do nothing. The bottom line is, you work you get paid. Nobody here has justified why interns shouldn't get paid. It's a sorry state of affairs and sums this country up to a tee.:(

hatrickpatrick

Alaskimo-cake wrote: »

Oh by the by, I was a care assistant for three years before I did nursing, never saw nurses sitting eating chocolates and answering phones while the care assistants did the work.
If I saw anything, it was the opposite. I was 17 when I started as a HCA, and on more than one occasion I was warned by older colleagues that my enthusiasm was unnecessary and it was suggested in a most passive agressive manner that I should stop showing up the others.

Ever seen the film "Hot Fuzz"?
You'd be surprised how that actually happens in reality. The person who works the hardest is demonized for making everyone else "look bad" even though being an exceptionally productive person doesn't reflect negatively on everyone else unless you actually want to look at it that way.

Otacon

Rodin wrote: »

I don't see student doctors getting bursaries or paid.
It's part of training, and I don't think they should be paid at all for it
So what if they strike. Aren't there lots of unemployed nurses who'll take the jobs?.

I have seen some stupid comments in this thread but this takes the biscuit.

What f*cking jobs? They are cutting the pay to nothing.

Brentmeister

Ok, there is a awful lot of petty, crap and unrealistic chat going on here, by people who clearly have no experience in a health care setting.

I am a nurse but have gone back to college, mainly because of the disgrace of the health service here.

I think it is completely wrong to completely abolish the pay for fourth year nurses. The work we did in fourth year was basically the very same as Staff Nurses, we do everything, we have all the responsibility of Staff nurses, and most of the time we are used to replace Staff nurses.

Before I went back to college, we had to sigh a disclaimer, because we were so short staffed we had way too many patients and there was such a high risk of something going wrong we had to sign this at the start and finish of each shift.

Please have some respect for student nurses, fair enough you all may not agree with whats going on, but you could at least try and understand that the work we do is very difficult so give us a break. No need to get insulting about the whole thing. We need nurses and if things like this keep up even more nurses will be leaving Ireland, and to be honest I don't blame them.

sollar

Hogzy wrote: »

If you got your figure by adding up the three types of nurses then you are completely mis guided. For every 10-15 staff nurses there is one CNM. Then for every 10-15 CNM's there is one director of nursing. So your average figure are WAYYYYYYYY off.

As your link shows the average wage for a staff nurse is 31,000 above you said they get paid 40,000 in the door - A sign that you havnt a clue what you are on about and you are over exagerating your figures

There is Staff Nurse, CNM1, CNM2, Assistant Director of Nursing and Director of Nursing.

Also, nurses get a qualification allowance on top of the basic salary.

steddyeddy

Sorry what hospitals have people being going to, with "lazy" nurses sitting eating chocolates ect. Let me break it to you guys nurses working hard unforgiving hours, dealing with drunks, sometimes not taking breaks isnt a stereotype!

sam34

Brentmeister wrote: »

The work we did in fourth year was basically the very same as Staff Nurses, we do everything, we have all the responsibility of Staff nurses, and most of the time we are used to replace them.

funny, in every hospital I've worked in the student nurses do not have the same responsibility as the staff nurses ..... they cannot do drug rounds, IV's, give blood products etc. their entries in the charts are counter-signed etc.

Padraig Mor

steddyeddy wrote: »

Sorry what hospitals have people being going to, with "lazy" nurses sitting eating chocolates ect. Let me break it to you guys nurses working hard unforgiving hours, dealing with drunks, !

What - all nurses work in A+E now do they?