views re NHS staffing...

I don’t believe the vast majority, or even a significant minority, hold the NHS or its staff in contempt. I believe the vast majority of Tory MPs do, however.

And I know a lot of nurses and can’t think of any who wouldn’t at least correct you if you told them that nursing was a vocation and many would be insulted. It’s old fashioned language and I feel it’s demeaning. Nurses are highly trained professionals and should be considered as such.

Edit: and we can argue the toss about the dictionary meaning of the word vocation and that it is interchangeable with job, but the only occupation it gets widely used for is nursing. Teaching also gets it, to a lesser degree, but I’m not sure how they feel about it. You wouldn’t hear a garage mechanic, or an insurance salesman have their job described as a vocation. It gets used for nurses as if there is some higher calling that they are following. Barring a few, and it tends to be the more religious nurses, in my experience, who wouldn’t contradict the use of vocation*, nurses are nurses because it is a job, is an industry they are interested in and something they are good at, simple as that. Often, as in my case, it follows years of volunteering in the Red Cross or St. John Ambulance (look closely as Trevor Aylott peels away after scoring the winner against Man City and you will see the 11…or 12, can’t quite remember, year old me celebrating in the little St. John Ambulance dugout), or elsewhere in the community.

Yes, there are a certain set of characteristics that help greatly, should you want to go into nursing, but this is true of every profession. The characteristics nurses need are things like compassion, a desire to help those in need, etc, but that’s true of a lot of professions. Although I did meet several old bags, masquerading as ward sisters during my training who seemed to share none of those characteristics and they made you wonder if they ever did! I used to wonder why on Earth they did the job when they just seemed to hate everybody, patients and colleagues aside. I could tell you some stories…

My London based non-nursing mates could vouch for me in saying that out of work you wouldn’t tell that the nursing ones of us were nurses, save perhaps for the nurse walk (we had a tendency to walk quite quickly without running, which is what we spent the day doing!). In fact, they were quite surprised in some cases (A&E nurses in particular tended to party quite hard).

*actually, I’ve thought of one who wouldn’t mind the use of the word vocation, but she is a vicar’s daughter who now works as a nurse through the church in some capacity, and, yes, I think vocation is apt for Jenny, and despite my views on religion I’m not saying that in a derogatory way, as she’s lovely. But she’s the only one I can think of.

 

I give up!!!
Are you sure you are not confusing ' vocational' with menial .. No one would ever accuse nurses as being anything but professional and highly trained. With respect that is NOT what vocational means. Have you actually read my entire posts!?
Anyway, suffice to say, me using the word vocation is in no way signalling disrespect for anyone involved in nursing.

 

Nursing isn’t a vocation. That’s an old line linked into the subjugation of women. It’s a highly skilled role that requires a degree, practical training and post qualification training. You need to revalidate every 3 years. You have to pay an annual fee for the NMC.

This sort of thinking belongs firmly in the last century.

We have 46k nursing vacancies due mainly to pay. It needs to be restored to 2010 levels with the bursary reimbursed.

More widely an A&E doctor gets £15.50 an hour. What the actual ****. They can and are going overseas to NZ or Australia and getting paid twice as much. And ho can blame them.

The missis a band 6 nurse gets offers on a daily basis to go and work abroad. She doesn’t want to but given I’m almost exclusively WFH it’ll get to the point where enough is enough

 

Paul has years of working in the NHS I suspects he knows much more about it than you. The vast majority of nurses would be insulted if you use the term vocation. Just because you don’t accept that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

 

WTF.

 

Because "vocation" is the 5h1tty stick they use to berate public servants that dare to ask for better pay or conditions or work/life balance. "You don't do this for the money, it's a vocation."

 

Thanks mate, you manage to sum it up better in a lot less words than me! Just to make sure I wasn’t wrong I texted Ollie and a couple of the lads and asked them what they thought of being told their jobs were a vocation, and the responses I got wouldn’t get past the sweary filter.

You should know anyway, as you’ve been dating nurses since you were about 16, as far as I remember!

 

Firstly where do you get the link between the Word vocation being an old link to the subjugation of women. Secondly, what sort of thinking belongs in the last century? By any dictionary definition vocation Is not a simile for career. I do not dispute that nursing is a skilled profession. Vocation as I keep repeating Is merely a word describing one aspect of what motivates people towards a career. Vocational training might Just be regarded as slightly degrading by some since that is often carried out over a shorter time frame than, say a degree course
As regards A&E doctors (Plural) earning 15.50 an hour and whilst It Is unacceptable that any doctor particularly an A&E one is paid so little his situation is a little different due in part that he is American and his visa payments drag his basic rate down . That figure Is not commensurate with the pay grade for an A&E UK doctor.

 

Thing is, most of the doctors on the A&E Shop floor will be SHO’s, who might have done as little as a year as an HO. The reason their hourly rate is so poor isn’t necessarily because they are paid poorly, it’s because they have to work ridiculously long hours. A lot of doctors are lost to New Zealand and Australia, just as a lot of nurses are. I know half a dozen nurses that have settled out there (including 3 ex-girlfriends - they don’t just break up with me, they move continent, etc, etc), and plenty more doctors and nurses that spent time out there before coming back. I don’t know how the money compares, but the conditions, and presumably hours for the doctors, are completely different.

Something certainly needs doing about junior doctors’ hours though. It’s a long time since I worked in A&E, but we used to have an SHO covering the night, with the rest having gone off by midnight, although one tended to stick around for a couple of hours if there was still a queue. This is because that SHO would be off, but on call to come back if it got busy. They’d rather stay behind a couple of hours and leave a manageable workload for the night SHO than get home, go to sleep and be woken two hours later when the SHO in the department was struggling. If we were really busy that second SHO would be there all night, going home to grab 2-3 hours sleep when the morning shift arrives, before coming back at midday to start again.

There would also be a senior on call (either the SR or Consultant), but calling them would be a last resort, especially some of them, who didn’t take kindly to being called in!! But this was 20 odd years ago. My mates who are still working in A&E assure me it’s not comparable nowadays to what we thought was ‘busy’ back then. I can’t imagine there are many more doctors in A&E than there used to be, so I can only think they are working even longer hours than the ridiculous amount they used to. This not only runs the risk of them chalking **** on it and pissing off to Aus or NZ, but it dramatically increases the chances of mistakes, because they are bloody knackered. Of course, nurses are doing a lot more of the roles the doctors used to do too - taking bloods, referring for x-rays, suturing, etc, and we have nurse practitioners, who see minor injuries from admission to discharge without them even seeing a doctor (I would have loved to do that role back in the day, if it existed), but this just increases the nurses’ workload and takes them away from doing the nursing duties that are needed, a lot of which are then passed on to HCAs, and paramedics, for the patients still stuck in the ambulances. They are all working flat out and it is dangerous. It was stressful enough when I was doing it.

The Tories should feel ashamed at what they have done to the NHS [and country!] and the sooner we see the back of them the better. But the only way to fix it is to address the elephant in the room, Brexit. I can understand why Starmer is steering clear of the word until he gets in*, but if he doesn’t do something about it once he is elected there is no hope for us. We don’t need to go back into the EU. We can’t go back into the EU. But there are a few obvious things he can do straight away. And then let’s get some money out of the tax dodging fat cats that have benefited from the past few years of Tory corruption.

*But in my opinion, if the country isn’t prepared to listen now to sense and what we need to do to get the NHS [and country!] back on track then they don’t deserve an NHS. Surely two years is enough time to get through to even the most vociferous Brexiteer whet a mess it is and what we need to do once the Tories are kicked out. Heck, we might even be able to force them out earlier once the public appetite is there. If Starmer isn’t prepared to take that risk, then people on the outside need to be shouting it from the hilltops. Either go and take the jobs in social care, to relieve the pressure on the hospitals and ambulance service, or let us let the people back in who will.

 

Ha! Junior doctor on Sky News right now. “Doctors are often held up as a kind of vocation, but the reality is this is a job”

 

@Gordon Ottershaw
On the vocation thing would I be right in thinking that in general the public use the word as a compliment? I've always considered nursing, teaching, firefighting, police etc as vocations which I take to mean it's MORE than just a job. It means more to the person doing it. It's a compliment.
But then the government use it as a way to say 'you don't need the usual things an employee gets because it's not a job, it's a vocation. You won't leave because it's a vocation' etc.
And those in nursing don't care what the public think as much as what the government thinks because sure it's nice to be likes but it's nicer to be paid for your work isn't it so they come down on the side of vocation being a 'bad' word that annoys them

Or have I got it completely wrong?

 

Actually I think you have nailed it and it should hopefully end the long debate I have had with Gordon andJimmy Viz who entered the fray regarding its meaning.
I regard vocation as a compliment word, like you say MORE than a job. Earlier my wife, as a retired teacher, said that she can see the argument from both sides. Some may consider it demeaning as at one time i.e. the Grammar school vs Secondary modern era, vocations and vocational training were somehow seen as inferior to O and A levels which were the path leading to university etc. The same applied to apprenticeships and blue collar jobs -engineering etc. as opposed to white collar office work and commerce. In reality, often blue collar workers like electrical engineers not only require much higher levels of skill particularly mathematics but also provide essential and vital service to the public. Clearly times have changed since degree level education is required to enter nursing. Nevertheless the stigma surrounding the word seems to linger.

 

Yeah I always liked a nurse. Surprised i didn’t try and get off with you in my lost 90s years…

 

Well we did have a nice hug at Anfield once, as we went rolling down the stars!

 

I was partial to a nurse back in the day. Was once intimate with one on Hampstead Heath and the following day a lovely elderly couple went into the hospital to return her ID badge, that they say she must have dropped while out walking her dog....

Much like Gordon, a few of my exes left the country. One to Cape Town and two to Brisbane (as a couple) ... But I don't take it personally

 

It is not just a question of pay. It is a multiplicity of issues. An unsympathetic government, being under valued, the whole system is under resourced, creeping privatisation (Operose), stress, ever increasing workload are all contributing factors. Like all our public services the NHS is grossly under resourced. Germany spends 11.5% of GDP on its healthcare, we spend 7.5%. Germany has 28,000 ICU beds we have 8,000. I know Germany is bigger country with larger population but it’s not four times bigger. We have the least number of clinicians per head of population in Europe. For God’s sake Greece has the highest. Greece ! We’re on their financial knees not that long ago. Most people would gladly pay more tax (except the mega rich). If there isn’t radical change we’re heading for a complete meltdown.

 

Until the Tories drop their decades of obsession with privatising the NHS (albeit by stealth) things won’t change. The next Labour Govt, should concentrate on recruitment, which includes pay and terms and conditions, then they can look at ending giving out NHS contracts to private healthcare

 

Before recruitment we need to think about Training and educating future NHS employees. Before that we need to make the pay sufficient to reduce the attrition within the service.

At the same time we also need to fund it correctly enough so we can fix the dilapidating hospital estate, and maybe just maybe see at least a hand full of the 40 new hospitals we were promised.

 

I used to live in Hampstead when I worked at the Royal Free and that’s two things we have in common! Something tells me I wasn’t the first male nurse to have sex on Hampstead Heath…

 

When were you at The Royal Free ?
I was there 7 years and could tell some stories .............