I was five when my mother gave me a frilly cap and a little red case packed with bandages. “Playing hospital” became my favourite game and I grew up dreaming of becoming a nurse… a Night Sister just like she was.
I watched TV’s “Angels”, learned about Florence Nightingale and read about VADs on the Somme. Then in 1982 I started my training on an annual salary of £3,000, around £12,500 today. But I didn’t last the year.
Within weeks I realised my “vocation” was a fantasy and I didn’t have the stomach or staying power for nursing.
Medical advances have transformed the profession in the 40 years since I bailed out. But what hasn’t changed is the terrible pay - or the way the angels are so swiftly demonised when they consider going on strike.
“How could they even consider it?!” people say. “They’re putting lives at risk. Aren’t they meant to be the caring profession? What about their vocation?”
I still remember the outrage in 1982 when thousands of nurses marched on London demanding a pay rise as other NHS unions took industrial action.
The nurses didn’t strike and eventually got a raise and new pay review body, but their salaries have never reflected the difficult work they do. And since 2010 their real terms pay has been CUT by 20% leaving many so skint that they’re now reliant on foodbanks.
That is why Royal College of Nursing members are going on strike for the first time in 106 years. How could they? Because they are at breaking point.
What if patients die? They already are thanks to worsening waiting lists.
Caring profession? Erm, weren’t you out clapping for them during the pandemic?
Vocation? Yep, that’s why they put their lives on the line wearing bin bags as aprons when there wasn’t enough PPE.
So it made me sick to hear Northern Ireland Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris suggesting that politicians share a similar vocation… when he pockets £150k a year and the average nurse gets £27k.
And to see Education Secretary Gillian Keegan disputing nurses’ reliance on foodbanks, while wearing her £10,000 Rolex watch.
When I gave up nursing in 1982 Margaret Thatcher was famously promising: “The NHS is safe with us.” But the last 12 years have proved that the Tories are the last people we need playing hospital.
