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Student Nurses Pay Abolition - a Patient-Care Issue?

  • 04-02-2011 3:08am
    #1
    shadowqueen
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 23 ✭


    I'm not really sure where the best place for this thread is...

    First up, just to clarify that I am not a nurse/student nurse, but as a patient, I am deeply concerned about the move to cut and eventually abolish their pay.

    While they have my full support in terms of working rights, am I the only person concerned about how the standards of our health care system will inevitably further decline when this comes in? Consider the facts:

    1.Working student nurses may be gaining valuable skills and experience, but sadly landlords do not accept valuable skills and experience for rent, nor do supermarkets exchange it for food. Deprived of pay, many student nurses will have to take part-time work wherever they can. They already work a full week in hospitals, doing a difficult and very important job for the first time. I fear that working extra hours on top of this, plus the strain of financial worries on top of an emotionally challenging job may prove too much for many student nurses, and as they cave in to exhaustion, their focus, concentration and abilities will diminish. A good nurse who works a full working week and then spends the entire weekend in a second job and who must constantly worry about budgeting and if s/he can afford next weeks rent is surely no longer capable of functioning as a good nurse.

    Those who can't find part-time work may have to drop out. Surely the last thing we need is fewer nurses, especially if a drop-out point is half-way through their final year, when a) money has been invested in their training and b) their hospital has come to rely on them.


    2. These are austere times, and if a large free labour supply is available to hospital managers, it won't be long before they start cutting numbers of experienced nurses and replacing them with untrained interns - with few nurses left to train them.

    3. The health system leaves much to be desired, and it is my belief that any cuts here that affect patient care and delivery of services must be fought lest the government - current and subsequent - decides it's an easy target.

    What do others think?
    Failed to load the poll.


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