Nurses across Nottinghamshire have been taking part in an historic day of strikes in a dispute over pay and working conditions. NHS workers braved sub-zero temperatures as they flocked to picket lines across the city, including at Queen's Medical Centre (QMC) and City Hospital in Nottingham, from 7am today (December 15).
Arianne Johns, a deputy ward sister at QMC, was one of thousands of Royal College of Nursing (RCN) members to take industrial action across the UK. She said she was sometimes forced to work 12-hour shifts without a break due to low staffing levels.
"We suffer in the wards, we are working short-staffed all the time. There's lots of brilliant international nurses but we need time to train them and we are not getting it," the 43-year-old said. "We are looking after really poorly patients and we get abuse from some people, nobody knows what's going on behind the curtain.
