Seems to me like they are making it more academic and less about caring. I have been through the diploma system and it worked well for me. 6/8 weeks uni based learning followed by same about of time roughly in a placement linked to the learning with an exam and/or an assignment to complete during the placement and a placement booklet documenting your learning while with qualified staff. It was a 3 yr course which was funded by the NHS in that uni fees were paid and we received a bursary based on age, dependents etc. I got about £450 a month.
I would not have trained as a nurse had it been through the degree route as I couldn't afford to as a mature student with bills etc to pay. While some might say well get a part time job thats in theory a great idea and I did work when I was in uni but when I was on placement we were working the same amount of hrs as a full time nurse as well as havng assigments/exams to prep for, tutors to see and additional day courses help at the hospital to go to.
I don't have a problem with it becoming degree only entry providing students were paid at least the same as a health care assistant during the weeks on placements and that recruits from overseas had the same level of education.
no.
i have been treated many times for motorbike accidents by the nhs and ive always had frst class treatment.
sometimes ive been so badly injuried you can see the worry on the nurses faces and they still hold your hand and pull you through.
brilliant caring people who work long hours and do not get enough credit.
I think its a shame that this will possibly be taking away the aspiration of some school leavers who hope to gain a career in nursing through the training that is already available. Another portion of kids informed that their shite if they didn't make the grade at school. so tiered is the system becoming I fear for those not in the top echelons of schooling.
It's all part of this one size fits all culture, a predictable reaction I know but there used to be many different kinds of nurses doing many different kinds of job. On the other hand experience in the field is just as if not more valuable than anything you can learn at university, but exams must be passed and qualifications gained. Not so long ago a patient in Brighton died after a drug meant to be injected into the spine was injected into the bloodstream instead, this is a person's life for goodness sake. Then one has to question the fact that patients are going into hospital for routine operations and catching terrible infections. So where are the hygiene regulations and who is inspecting let alone enforcing them?
I went to see my mother in law (ex wives mother) back in 2005, when it was quite obvious she was not going to survive after a heart attack and a nasty fall. She was unconscious on a trolley in a corridor literally dying. There was a lot of staff walking about, all looking rushed off there feet, but nothing being done with any of the patients.
So is there a problem with the way that hospital staff are trained? Is there really a shortage? Is there a proper pecking order or is it a classic case of too many chiefs and not enough Indians?
That was geriatrics, don't get me started on A&E!!
Brighton there is nothing wrong in the way they are trained, just the lack of proper nurses.
There seems now to be one nurse per 10 patients, where as years ago it was a lot more. So the level of care has declined because of lack of numbers....it really is that simple.
We all know nurses have been treated appallingly over decades with regards to poor pay, and mainly because of that nurses have left in their droves, and have not been replaced.
The nurses need to be paid a proper wage if not more than the average wage, as it is a vocation.
But Governments have said that if they paid more it would attract people who were only in it for the money. :shock: A strange anaology but a money saving comment.
IF nurses were paid more, we would have more....and then the level of care would increase as there would be more staff....a simple equation I think.
I think nurses are superb, and I know there are other professions that are equally needed, but it is only when you enter a hospital either as a patient or a visitor, do you suddenly realise how brilliant they all are.
When there are too few nurses, who are worked off their feet.....mistakes will happen. But I love our nurses, the job they do is invaluable, and they need looking after. Pay them more money and watch the numbers increase.....the only trouble is it will take years to fill the void.
My auntie trained as a nurse back in the 30's she started off on bed pan duty and worked her way up to become Matron. It was on the job training with exams inbetween buit what she really gained was people skills ie how to communicate with the patients around here, which I have found is lacking in hospitals these days.
I have spent some time in hospital over the past few years and have to again in the near future and the one thing that I am dreading the most of the nurses. I spent 5 days in hospital where I was ment to be on a 24 hour drip, and I was the one who was having to keep asking for it to be changed when it ran out every 4 hours and then it took 2 hours for them to change it. I have a problem where its very hard to get blood out of me and because of bad experiences in the past I know that I can only have bloody taken with a needle but no one listened and I came home black and blue and in lots of pain as my vains collasped in my arms. I'd asked for pain relief while in hospital and they would automatically give me tablets not bothering to check my notes and notice that I had to have pain relief through my drip as I was being sick.
There was also a 70 year old woman in the ward that we were in and she had had a stroke, and at meal times she was left alone to feed herself and all the other women on the ward were taking it in turn to feed here as she clearly counldnt manage on here own. Then one of the night time staff left the bed guard down and the poor woman fell out of the bed, this was an accident waiting to happen as the staff just werent reading the notes of the patients.
No one bothered to show you where the bathrooms were, the food was so bad I was asking people to bring me food in. And trying to get discharged from the hospital was a nightmare as well, I spent 12 hours waiting around for a doctor to sign a form to release me to go home with some medicines.
I dont think university training is going to help, you need people who understand the patients needs and have had hands on experience, it will just mean that we end up having more hospitals with staff that cant cope with the number of patients they are having to deal with and how any more accidents are going to happen.
I wasn't and wouldn't even want to criticise nurses, to me it is a noble profession and they are literally worth their weight. Unfortunately the National Health Service is yet another great idea that has been fucked up by politicians. Lately successive regimes have boasted about spending more money on health, of course that money is not raising the wages of browbeaten but loyal staff, it is being spent on bureaucracy and red tape, more managers, and streamlining. Over the last few decades government mismanagement has seen the total decline in manufacturing, heavy industry, and education. Public transport and telecommunications have been privatised, and north sea oil has been scrapped. Why oh why are the idiots in Whitehall still trusted to run the health service, which after all is often the deciding factor of whether someone lives or dies? Which brings me back to the beginning of this post. Labour are telling us that they are spending record amounts of money on the NHS, so why is it so short of beds and why are there not enough nurses?
A lot of it Brighton is the sheer greed of the drug companies.
Have you any idea how much they must pay to them?
That is just one of many reasons why money is pumped in, but little seems to show to the real people out there....the patient.
Would it mean that doctors would study for a .....doctorate!
Learning English aswell would be a good idea!
Yep, learning english would be a start!
Having seen many times people employed in postitions they are qualified to hold purely on the degrees they have then its wrong....
Simply because someone has a degree to say they can do a job doesnt automatically mean they can do it....
There is no subsitute for on the job training properly supervised and monitored/tailored to suit the individual...
on the whole i feel most nurses do a fantastic job and most should be paid far more than they are
having nurses with a degree might help with some parts of patient care but not all
i have had lots of experience with hospitals over the last year both visiting and as a patient and the thing that worries me is that there seems to be a lack of nurses (or healthcare assistants) who are there to help ill people to the toilet and with basic toileting, washing and dressing care plus feeding
also i saw first hand a bedridden patient develop awful bedsores on their heels etc when they were in bed for several weeks, the patient also at times wasnt cleaned up after opening their bowels and sometimes their clothes were dirty and stained, they were being cared for by the highest level of nurses but they still developed bedsores !!!
i was horrified to see that
i nursed many years ago and my patients were mostly bedridden longterm but none of them developed bedsores and im very proud of that
a degree might help with working out the right quantities of drugs but does it help with providing basic physical care ?
Do nurses need to be university educated?
Certain grades of nurses, yes. There are many grades of ward nursing staff - the lower grades who have various titles depending on the health authority such as care assistants, nursing auxiliaries, ward orderlies etc. These are the "bum wipers and hand-holders" (bless them all!). Higher grade nursing staff are now being given more medical responsibilities including dispensing meds, extended obs, catheterisation, cannulation and so forth. These skills and procedures require a far more structured learning process than ever before and I believe a university course is the best way forward initially. The national paramedic qualification has been a university acquired degree for a few years now and has produced some excellent medics.
As with the paramedic qualification, the nursing degree will hopefully follow a similar curriculum - classroom study backed up with ward experience.
As my Dad used to say - "you can't do this kind of job until you've seen it, smelled it, felt it and dealt with it.
I live with a nurse who tells me that anyone graded higher than "a health care support worker" does obs, and meds and all the stuff that slurpy says "higher grade" nurses do, the nurse i live with did 3 years training which consisted of University work and doing 12 week rotations on all the different wards to see how each worked.
She has been fully qualified now for 4 years and has since done an Honors degree and is now doing her masters and finds herself far more qualified than any other nurse,ward sister and ward manager on her ward but she says herself that the qualifications do not make the nurse good, it is what is inside the person and what they have learnt and taken forward whilst physically doing the job.
Also in the degree courses that nurses do at the moment there are 100`s of different options and subject sections of which you can only take a maximum number of modules are we to assume that there will be a new nursing degree invented that will be called a degree but will be academically light weight?
The thing i find astonishing (which is not part of this thread) is that a nurse has got to pay there own registration each year and every year which i believe is around £100 otherwise they can not work which to me is disgusting and a tax on nurses and also the fact that they have to be a member of 1 of the unions at about £14 per mth i believe?!?!?
Health care support worker is a new one on me, but I have only done consultancy work for the NHS for the last few years. I agree with what you've said here -"the qualifications do not make the nurse good, it is what is inside the person and what they have learnt and taken forward whilst physically doing the job" but I think there is a need for certain career paths of nursing to have a more formalised start, depending on what field they choose to follow - as you say, there are many. Your friend is more than amply qualified to manage a nurse-led walk-in centre or minor casualty dept. GP's are becoming redundant in the 21st century NHS!
Yes, it is awful that nursing staff have to pay for their own registration - so do Ambulance Technicians, Paramedics and basics doctors. Union membership isn't mandatory, but definitely recommended. Every worker has to pay the union fees if they want good protection at work.
"do nurses need to be university educated?"....no they need to be a damn sight better than that
im a nurse. I started at the bottom in the early 80's learnt the basics. In the late 80's i left hospital nursing as the job was unsafe through lack of nurses on the wards to do a good and effective job.
In the 90's i got a few diplomas a degreee and a masters degree and guess what im paid no more than i was before the degree i just do 2 or even 3 peoples job each day come home knackered have 2 slipped discs. I now work to what was a junior doctors roll on a nurses wage ......... am i bitter YES i bloomin am. But i carry on why ....because its a vocation.......because its what im good at............ because when u get to top of one tree you dont want to start at the bottom of another career tree.
When i was at university i studied a paper entitled The aesthetics and impirics of nursing care. It was a work looking at do nurses need academic knowledge or experiental knowledge. The conclusion is you need both. A nurse with out compassion is nothing but neither is a nurse without knowledge. You need to know what you are doing or you kill people simple as.
There are nurses who do not have or need degrees they are called Health Care Assistaints but have to work to a level they are compitent at.
I feel the NHS needs a good shake up. Enough properly trained nurses should be employed to work at an acceptable level of care. Those working under constant pressure burn out and leave the job. Nurses need to be properly remuneratied for the work they do and the responsibility they take. And most importainly nurses need to be able to care again.
Having been a nurse for many years more than 20 years and now a quite senior nurse manager in Forensic Psychiatry (Mentally Disordered Offenders) I have many staff working for me with 1 degree and some with more. I incidently do not have a degree in anything just common sense. For some it has hightened there skills, though some are just as uncaring as they were when they took up nursing.
The greatest problem from my eyes is that nurse education has become a business and its "bums on seats" in Universities were the quality of caring doesn't matter as long as the acedemia and results are there.(League Tables) I regularly teach groups of nurses and many want to be managers and not have to deal with patients, makes you wonder why they became a nurse. Its such a shame that we have reached a point were what was a vocation is now a university option if you dont make the grade for something else.
When I was a lot younger studying American politics in College we were warned about the danger of following the USA in its, a degree for everyone irrespective of job attitude.
Nurses now chase degrees in this and that to elivate there status so they can attract higher salaries or leave the UK and go else where to earn more money. The result is a flood of foreign nurses whose english skills sometimes leave a lot to be desired.
After reading this thread I feel like telling my daughter that maybe she should change her choice of career. although its more of a vocation for her as she has been in and out of hospitals since a very young age and feels she would like to give something back for all the care she has recieved. She works her little heart out at 6th form to get the results she needs to get into uni to enable her to be a paediatric nurse. Hopefully things will be better by the time she leaves uni and nurses will be appreciated a bit more.
:neutral: Many valid points raised already.
It probably depends on how you define "a nurse".
A dictionary definition is "a person trained to care for the sick or infirm", this implies to me the basic care of people, which is driven by a desire to care and practical skills - more of a "care assistant" job these days. Higher skilled nurses are really health practitioners taking on many skills historically done by doctors, or new functions created by improved technology.
There is now a good case for degree level for the latter in an age when degrees are more widespread. Back in the 50s and 60s, only 20% or so of the population even sat the then "0" level GCEs and less than 5% of young people went to unis.
Plim
NOT at all, you cant teach experience.
Is it not important to get the balance right? It doesn't matter how many times you read up about something, the first time you actually do it will still be the first time. In pharmaceutical manufacturing I would say that at least 90% of what you learn is taught "on the job", but there are annual appraisals. But last time I was in hospital there was some broken glass still in a cut I had, fortunately the triage nurse had seen it all before as had all the others in A&E. What I'm trying to say is one will always feel safer and more comfortable in experienced hands.
