Newly qualified nurses attacked by patients just months into the job warn "wards are dangerous".
Isy, 21, was assaulted by a patient as he tried to leave Whiston Hospital's gastroenterology ward, which houses alcoholic patients who are detoxing, a process that can leave them confused and aggressive. Isy said: "I had a bit of a cry, but you have to get on with it. On the day, I wanted to go home, but you can't. People are in hospital because they're unwell - you can't just go."
Her colleague Katie, 23, said the same patient hit her, grabbing her arms and "charging" her doing the corridor a couple of weeks ago. They feel supported by their employers - St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Whiston Hospital and has "a zero tolerance approach to violence and abuse of staff".
READ MORE: 'Perfect' baby boy fights for life after being given 1% chance of survival
A Trust spokesperson said it "has a close working partnership with Merseyside Police", adding: "Staff are encouraged to report incidents immediately and, alongside a number of security initiatives, the Trust operates a 'red card system' for serious incidents. The safety of our staff is a priority and the Trust has a wealth of support services available for them to access at all times."
Both Isy and Katie are newly qualified, "thrown into the deep end" without a "proper break" for two years because they've used summers to catch up on placements cancelled due to covid. Katie was "scared" starting the job in September, and low staffing levels make "the pressure higher".
In the four months they've been working nurses, Isy and Katie have seen conditions bad enough to drive them to strike over pay and conditions, along with up to 100,000 other members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN). Speaking to the ECHO on a picket outside Whiston Hospital on Thursday, coursemate-turned-colleague Isy said: "You expect somebody to be there with you when you start, but because of staffing, you don't have people there."
There's a shortage of nearly 6,000 nurses in the North West alone, meaning nearly one in ten of the region's NHS nursing roles are unfilled. Katie said: "There are no staff to sit there and be with that one patient, one-to-one. Because there are no staff there to take the load or the pressure off, you're literally doing everything at once."
When all the ward's 32 beds are full, its night-time staffing levels are three registered nurses and two healthcare assistants, in line with guidance from National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the ECHO understands. In the daytime there are five nurses on the early shift and four nurses on the late shift.
Whiston Hospital has a pool of healthcare assistants to be allocated for one-to-one care, and staff are redeployed across wards to maintain safe staffing levels in the event of last-minute sickness.
Katie feels "the wards are dangerous at the minute" with the staffing levels she's experienced and added: "The nurses are having to do two jobs are once. When you're newly qualified, we're not IV-trained, we haven't got all our training like other members of staff have, so that's putting more pressure on the other members of staff."
She said she's never finished a shift on time, and sometimes sacrifices her breaks. She said: "There's just no staff on the floors and things need doing, and you've got to do everything, but you can't do everything.
"It's hard to leave on time at the end of your shift when you know there are things that still need to be done. Sometimes after shifts, I'm having to stay an hour because there's no one to take over the shift - there's no nurse there to hand over to."
Hannah, 24, also works on the gastroenterology ward at Whiston Hospital. The nurse said: "I go home after my shifts crying some days because it's been that overwhelming. You don't go home from work and leave work at work. You go home with the pressure. I'm always texting people that I've handed over to - 'Did I tell you this? Did I tell you that? How's this patient?' - because you're just worrying all the time."
Hannah said: "There's no incentive for new nurses to want to start the job. They took away the fact you were getting a degree for free - we now have to pay for it. You've got to have the heart for the job, you can't be in it for the money at the end of the day. But now it comes down to patient safety. It's not a safe environment for patients."
Nurses and paramedics will be striking on the same day next month - February 6 - the first time they'll be walking out on the same day. Both groups are taking action against a 5% pay rise offered to NHS staff on the Agenda for Change contract. The RCN is asking for a pay rise of five percentage points above inflation - roughly 18% - which Prime Minister Rishi Sunak described as "not affordable".
For both groups of NHS workers, this dispute is as much - if not more - is about patient safety and the impact of staff shortages as it is about pay. When asked if they felt pay would fix the problems in the NHS, nurses told the ECHO "no".
But they hope better pay will at least stem the flow of experienced staff out of the NHS into better paid or lower stress roles, and they hope it will make the health service a more attractive place to work for the next generation of healthcare workers.
Receive newsletters with the latest news, sport and what's on updates from the Liverpool ECHO by signing up here
READ NEXT
Doctor describes 'warzone' hospitals where patients are 'nursed on the floor'
999 call handlers 'feel at fault' when they tell crying patients the wait time for ambulance
When will teachers across Merseyside go on strike? Full list of dates
Sacked worker banned from every B&Q for life after final customer announcement
'Kidnap' arrest after man in high vis 'taken' into Range Rover
