A nurse said she joined the picket lines today after her friend passed away due to NHS staff shortages.
Today, RCN nurses at Arrowe Park hospital in Birkenhead took to the picket lines for the second day in a row in a dispute over a 5% payrise offered to staff on Agenda for Change contracts, as well as to improve patient safety.
Donna Vyskocil, a staff nurse at the hospital, told the ECHO: "I don't know if anyone here wants to be here today, but we've come here because we're terrified for the future of the NHS.
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"But for me there's also another reason I'm here. Sadly my friend passed away last July as a direct result of the staff shortages at another NHS trust.
"My friend wasn't the first and she won't be the last. No one has made this choice for nothing."
While talking to the ECHO on the picket line outside the hospital, nurses spoke about the 12 hour shifts, the demands of the job and what has brought them to join the picket lines today.
Annie, another a staff nurse at Arrowe Park hospital, said: "It's got to a point. It shouldn't have had to come to this.
"Its been years in the making. I started in 2020. I think there was a lot of praise for nurses at the time and during covid - grand gestures and clapping hands.
"They won't even sit down and negotiate with us now. It's a degree level job and you're not paid fairly at all for the work you do.
"It's not so much that you take the work home with you, it's that you barely get home at all. And you don't get paid any overtime for any extra hours."
One nurse, Ashley, told the ECHO they had "seen more people go off sick with mental health that we've ever seen." Another talked about a "vicious cycle" where new nurses are recruited but as a result of staff shortages and other demands cannot be given the proper mentorship, meaning they then seek work elsewhere or with private agencies where they can be more selective over the hours they work.
Tracey, who has worked on the maternity wards at the hospital for 11 years. said: "It's constant. It's exhausting. We do 12 hour shifts with no break.
"I'd just like to get home and not be completely exhausted. I'd like to be able to spend time with my family after work.
"I'd just like to go home and not have to go straight to bed."
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