Every day, I open my phone to see new LinkedIn notifications asking me to congratulate former colleagues on their new jobs, more often than not outside the NHS. Not just moving to Australia or New Zealand, as is widely reported, but often into consulting posts for various private corporations.
This isn’t happening for no reason – it is common knowledge at this point that conditions and pay in the NHS are not up to par. Across the board, nurses, doctors, porters, cleaners and, actually, the vast majority of the public sector have had their pay decimated by the legacy of David Cameron and George Osborne’s austerity. Job security is also no longer a guarantee, with many staff facing unemployment due to training bottlenecks.
