Before I start this story, I really want to emphasise how hard this career is for students to nurses who have been qualified for years. In a recent study, it was said that one in ten nurses will leave the NHS this year. Why is this? I decided to talk to a student nurse to understand their struggle. For reasons, she asked to stay anonymous.
It’s 5.30 in the morning and she’s getting up for University. “I decided to commute to university, I get up really early and I won’t be home until 4 or 5 in the afternoon.” For many of the students, this course is like a 9 to 5 job already. Long days will really take it out of them, and they’re expected to do this every day.
A massive part of the job is the placements that the students are expected to undertake. Day and night shifts that can be 13 hours long. A student nurse is expected to work these shifts unpaid since the government scraped the bursary a few years ago. It is really hard to understand why the government would scrap the bursary when nurses are so vital to the healthcare system that we have today.
“One shift”, the student nurse said “I had to work, and I was the only nurse on shift. It was just me and two healthcare assistants.” This is shocking, the NHS is having to let a student nurse work a shift on a ward by herself with the number of cuts being made. This sentence really shows us what the NHS is like and how much it is struggling.
Can the student nurses shed a light on why the NHS are struggling? The stories I have heard definitely show us the struggles that the nurses and the NHS struggle.