A mum is struggling to pay for bills, debt and childcare while working full-time as a nurse.
The 37-year-old old, who asked not to be named, qualified as a nurse in 2021 after working in covid wards during her third year of studies. She felt "privileged to hold that hand and be that last voice they heard" when families weren't allowed to visit, and when many healthcare workers had moved out of their own homes to protect their own families from the virus.
She told the ECHO: "That made people unite a lot more and your work family became even more solid because you had to support your colleagues as well as your patients. I try to forget about it because there are so many traumatic memories along the way, and I think that's what you're seeing now - we've had enough and we can't endure physically or mentally anymore."
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The mum of three spoke to the ECHO on a freezing picket line outside Old Swan Walk-in Centre on Thursday, December 15, the first day of a nationwide nurses strike. It's the first time members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) - up to 100,000 of them - have walked out across the country in the union's 106-year history.
It's one of a number of strikes affecting the NHS this month, with both nurses and paramedics taking industrial action next week in disputes over an offered pay rise of less than 5% on average. The RCN has rejected this and asked for a pay award of at least inflation plus 5%, which would be an increase of roughly 16%.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said this is "not affordable", and the Department of Health and Social Care warned it could cost £9b extra if applied to all staff on the Agenda for Change contract, which also includes paramedics and cleaners.
The newly qualified nurse on the Old Swan picket feels the below-inflation offer they've rejected is a "slap in the face" after the praise showered on NHS workers and carers during the pandemic. She said: "They clapped for us, but it doesn't pay our bills."
She's stuck with a debt of over £40,000 from training to be a nurse, which she's trying to pay off by working 14-hour shifts from 7am to 9pm for £12 an hour. But on top of paying for parking and school dinners, this shift pattern leaves her relying on childcare most days a week, meaning she's had to " endure huge costs" up to £2,000 a month to look after her kids while she's at work.
A newly qualified nurse's salary of roughly £27,000 only stretches so far. She said: " You're robbing Peter to pay Paul. You shouldn't be going into debt when you're working, should you? The whole point of going to work is to better your life, not to make it in a deficit."
She added: "I'm a single mum with three children and I'm working full time. I'm working just to pay bills, let's face it, and it's quite sad that nurses are using foodbanks. We shouldn't be relying on that. How can we look after other people if we're not looking after ourselves?"
The 37-year-old was "sad" to leave her service on Thursday, something she'll do again on Tuesday, December 20 when nurses walk out for a second day of industrial action. But with 47,000 nursing vacancies across the country - half the number who're estimated to be going on strike - services are already understaffed to the point this nurse feels they're "stretched to our limits".
Numerous nurses on the picket told the ECHO that services still running on the strike day - when many routine and non-urgent NHS services were postponed or reduced - actually had more nurses than a usual day because of efforts by the NHS and RCN to maintain safe staffing levels for the sake of patients.
The Liverpool nurse said they're "fighting for safe staffing", which many nurses have linked to nurses' pay. Even with a pay rise of 3% last year, when other public sector workers experienced a pay freeze, nurses' pay has fallen behind other public sector workers in the last 12 years.
Nurses' pay is worth roughly 17% less now than it did then, according to the RCN, and that falling value is a factor in driving nurses out of the NHS into better paid agency work or jobs abroad, and into less stressful work for similar pay.
The 37-year-old mum of three said: "We are the service, so without the people in the service, the service doesn't run, and this is why nurses have had to take this stance. We've got the massive support of the RCN, but it still feels like we're being suppressed by everything else, the cost of living, the government. At the end of the day, costs are going up, fuel prices are increasing, something's got to give."
She added: " I don't do this for financial reasons, I do it because I'm proud to be a nurse. When we put that uniform on each day, it's because we care about the society we live in. It used to be a profession that was highly regarded and people wanted to go into it, but now you've got newly qualified nurses leaving after a year or so, which is not good for longevity.
"I'm reducing my hours at the moment because it's just too much. I can't look after my mental health and balance the scales of being a responsible parent as well as having a full-time job, and the cost of living is impacting everybody no matter whether you're at work or not."
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