This is a wee note to you, if you work in the NHS.
I used to think that when you graduated, as a nurse, a doctor, a therapist, a physio, you owed the NHS a good few years service.
This work would be challenging. But your service was part-repayment for the free education.
And you received, as a bonus, the genuine heartfelt admiration, respect and love of all of us who have relied upon the NHS over the years.
Scots trained in the public systems who immediately disappeared abroad, or who chased the money into private healthcare were being a wee bit selfish I thought.
I don’t think that any more.
You don’t owe us a thing.
We havnae held up our end of the bargain.
So many parts of particularly frontline care are no longer safe, nor appropriate, places to work.
Why are dedicated staff leaving the NHS? Ask my friend
I ken a good number of folk that work with you within the NHS – some close pals, some distant acquaintances – who are throwing their hands up in disgust at the work environment and walking away.
One Dundonian pal of mine loves being a nurse.
He worked hard to get there.
He put in the hard yards as a hospital porter, getting his education while working brutal backshifts and late nights, before becoming a qualified and dedicated nurse in the intensive care unit in a main national hospital.
It was demanding. But he found it meaningful.
Then Covid came along.
He told me me: “Usually in the ICU, you’d have four folk come in that were near dead, and you’d save three. Wi covid, it was like a dozen coming in, and they were all dying.”
It was a traumatic event.
He received no meaningful support, or a break to recover.
He just found himself getting worked harder and harder and harder, as the provision around him creaked and, in places, buckled.
Shortly after that, he and his partner packed up and moved overseas.
They continue to work as nurses. He and I keep in touch.
He’s happier now.
Work is more respectful of his time. He is better paid. His quality of life has improved.
“Conditions in the UK are poor,” he said. “And you’re told to put up with it, and if you strike you risk harming your patients.
“You really have to want to work as a nurse otherwise its pointless.”
Same pay, fewer burdens – the staff leaving the NHS to work in Tesco
Another pal’s daughter, also raised around here, and now in her early twenties, is doing the same.
She’s only a few years into nursing and already she’s leaving the NHS to work in New Zealand.
Why, I asked.
The answer was simple. “Better pay for less stress. The nurse:patient ratio is better.”
She can help people to a higher standard, and experience fewer negative impacts.
Why wouldn’t you go?
It has been made pretty clear that we don’t appreciate your efforts enough. If the job’s killing you, pack up and leave. You don’t owe us a thing
She has pals leaving the NHS to work in Tesco, because they can earn the same pay as shop staff with none of the burden of responsibility.
I’m sure you’ll have plenty of pals and colleagues who have left too, and even more who are chatting about leaving on breaks and at the canteen.
Maybe you’ve thought about it yourself.
No one would blame you if you went.
Governments to blame, and we’re the ones who elected them
Of course, your work is partly a profession and partly a vocation.
You do it because it is in you to help and to heal.
Successive governments have taken advantage of that fact.
We’ve betrayed you, not the other way around.
The governments we elect in both the UK and in Scotland have not successfully evolved the NHS into an entity fit for purpose in 2023.
That’s not your fault. It’s ours for electing the incapable, and not demanding that the overhauls take place.
It has been made pretty clear that we don’t appreciate your efforts enough.
If the job’s killing you, pack up and leave. You don’t owe us a thing.
I support the strikers. And now I also support the leavers. The back turners. The ones who have given all they can give, taken all they can take, and now need to sinder from the old NHS.
Anti-strike law – the action of a government that can no longer rely on goodwill
You could have expected that, with so many of you and your colleagues out on strikes, and droves more heading for the airport departure lounges, your elected leaders would be grovelling.
Apologies. Pay bumps. Desperate pleading with you to keep on working, that we’ll find a way to fix this.
Patients are waiting hours on trolleys and in ambulances. This is a service in crisis.
Our ambulance workers are clear – the government now needs to listen and act. pic.twitter.com/8HLqIMqPqK
— GMB Union (@GMB_union) January 11, 2023
Not a bit of it.
The Tories are passing a hastily prepared bit of legislation which will force NHS staff into work during strikes.
They will attempt to pass it this coming Monday.
If my paymasters demanded I kept going in to work on strike days, and had underfunded and under-supported me to the extent I could no longer do my job well, I would walk away.
As Gary Smith, GMB general secretary said recently: “The NHS can only function with the goodwill of its incredible staff.”
The majority of us recognise that.
But I don’t blame you in the slightest if you feel that your well of goodwill has run dry.
