Why I Support The Nursing Strike

Registered Nurse, Claire, outlines why she supports the nursing strike, and with examples from her own life, explains why the NHS is already in crisis.

Introduction

Hi everyone. Welcome back to another video. My name is Claire Carmichael. I'm a registered Nurse, and today we're gonna be talking all about the Nurse strikes. So, what do we know so far about the Nurse strikes?

The Royal College Of Nursing Have Voted To Strike

The Royal College of Nursing or the RCN for the first time in history in England, Northern Ireland, and Wales, within the UK, Nurses across the board who are members of the RCN have voted to strike.

A ballot went out, and you had to get your votes in before December, and an overwhelming majority of people have voted and signed up to strike.

Massive backlogs, patients dying unnecessarily. Preventable deaths are happening every single day. What's being done about it?

So under the Trade Union Act 2016 in the UK, industrial action ballots require at least a 50% turnout to be able to take strike action. And the results came out, and there was an overwhelming majority of people who voted to strike.

And so now we are all going on strike. So now strike action is gonna be happening.

Why Nurses Have Voted To Strike

It's gonna be happening on the 15th of December, 2022, and the 20th of December, 2022, across the whole of the UK. However, not everybody can strike.

It's only those people who are under the NHS Agenda for Change, because that's what they're striking about, it's the NHS Agenda for Change. It doesn't meet inflation and the terms and conditions and all of that, just doesn't meet what we need in the world today.

And I have seen some comments on social media saying, "Oh, well Nurses have just received a pay rise of however many percentage, and blah, blah, blah."

Actually, in real terms, that was a massive pay drop because Nurses have been on such a massive pay freeze for years now because of government stoppages, government's cuts, understaffing.

Everything has been happening for years now. This wasn't just because of Covid. This has been happening since before Covid, slowly been going downhill as we've went along.

The impact of Covid has just whoa, multiplied that by a million. Anyway, in the meantime, inflation's been going up. Cost of living is going up, up, up. Meanwhile, Nurses wages are down here.

Everything's rising. People cannot afford to pay electricity anymore. People cannot afford to feed their own families and children anymore because of the cost of living. People are turning to food banks.

It's, it's like we're going back in time. It's like, we are living in 2022. We should have the best NHS healthcare system that is out there. We should be aiming for the best in the world. And at the minute we're failing.

The NHS Is Already In Crisis

And I'm gonna tell you a very personal story. I'm gonna try not to get that emotional. But this week my dad was in hospital on the Sunday. He, well, over the weekend actually, he became very unwell.

So naturally I was panicking. I'm living in Birmingham, he's in Liverpool. I couldn't get to him. He has no other family or anybody around him that could get to him.

So I called an ambulance straight away, half past two in the afternoon on Sunday. And obviously because of all of the, like I've just said, this backlog of patients that's happening, understaffed, undervalued, cuts that have been made to our NHS over the years, impact of Covid.

We're now in winter, so we've got the winter flu pressures as well as everything else. The ambulance didn't arrive. He was sat waiting. He rang me about half past nine at night.

Remember I was on the phone to the ambulance, I called an ambulance out at half past two in the afternoon. Half past nine at night he calls me and says, "I'm feeling really tired. I might just go to bed. I can't wait any longer."

And I said, "Listen, you can't do that because the ambulance is going to come. They're already backlogged. Do not waste their time. Just stay up a little bit longer please and wait for them."

Because he was really unwell. He needed to see somebody. So I didn't hear from him for the rest of the night. I tried to ring him in the morning. I couldn't get hold of him.

I finally got hold of him about lunchtime on the Monday. And he was still waiting for his ambulance. They rang him about 10 to midnight, he said. And they said that they were really massively backlogged.

They wouldn't get out to them for a fair few hours. So he told them he couldn't wait any longer. He's going to bed. So obviously they canceled the ambulance and things for him and just said to him, "Okay, well go back to your GP then. If you need us, give us a call."

But dad's very stubborn, so he went to bed. Anyway, he slept in. So I didn't speak to him until the lunchtime 'cause he's very fatigued, very tired. And that's not like him, that's not my dad.

So what I did was I rang his GP. I got him an Uber because again, I couldn't get to him. I started the first day of my new job on that day. I couldn't get to him. I didn't want to let my team down.

It's years of being undervalued. It's years of pay freezes. It's horrific, and it's not getting any better. And something needs to be done. Something needs to be done now. We don't have the time.

It was that sort of 50/50 moment. I did tell my boss though. I told her what was going on. I'm trying to sort out my dad. And so I got my dad an Uber from his house to the GP. And then obviously we knew what the GP was going to say.

Get into hospital, straight to hospital with all of his observations were completely off. Blood pressure was low, heart rate was high, everything was going on. So he was straight sent into hospital.

He got to hospital around 6:00 PM Monday night. So I knew he'd be okay hopefully 'cause he was in a safe place. So yeah. So he got there 6:00 PM. The next following day I spoke to him.

It was about quarter to 8 in the morning he rang me, and I thought, "Oh gosh, why is he ringing me at quarter to 8 in the morning telling me that he was still sat in A&E. He'd been left in the chair.

There's about a hundred plus people waiting to be seen. There's no beds, they're understaffed. And he wasn't offered any food, drinks, nothing. So he'd had nothing to eat since like, well within 24 hours.

The last thing he ate was his breakfast the day before. He didn't have lunch and he didn't have dinner that day because he was waiting for the ambulance. And he was worried I might miss the ambulance and stuff like that 'cause he's a worrier.

So he'd had nothing. He was freezing cold. He didn't have any blankets, anything like that. So naturally I panicked. I, luckily my boss was amazing. I was working from home that day and I could go up.

So myself and my partner left the house. We went up to see him. By the time we got there, it was like two o'clock in the afternoon, and he did have a bed. He just had a bed at two o'clock in the afternoon.

So that was like, it was almost 24 hours later I suppose. He managed to get his bed. That was his wait time. It was just over 20 hours. And that just shows the pressure that we're under.

Hospital Staff Are On Their Knees

Normally in any any normal years, winter's always been horrific in A&E. The pressure has always been crazy. And there's always campaigns and changes and stuff like that happening to try and help.

Like pharmacies are being given more responsibilities now to help with that pressure. GPs, there's local little hubs, there's walk-in centres and things like that being set up to try and take the backlog and the pressure off of A&E.

And it's always been like that every winter. But this winter is even worse, because we've had two years of Covid, we've got staff, less staff because of Covid because people are leaving the profession as well because of everything that's happened.

Undervalued, understaffed. Nurses cannot take it anymore. They're on their knees. And when I'm saying they're on their knees, they are on their knees. When I took my, when I went up to see my dad, you know he just got into his bed.

They managed to clear that a hundred lot of patients, but they then had a whole, gosh, when I arrived, the waiting room in A&E was rammed. You couldn't move. There was, all the seats were taken, people were standing. It was overflowing outside the door.

I've got no idea how they cope. That's a second lot. Where are all these patients gonna go? How are we gonna manage? And it's not just A&E. This is everywhere.

Community, primary care, everywhere that is just backlogged. It's backlogged. The waiting times that are just ridiculous because there's no staff.

Why Isn't Our Government Doing Anything To Save Our NHS?

It's quite easy to blame people and put the blame on things. But this, it's no one particular reason why this has happened. It's a combination of lots of different things that's happened over the years.

I remember as a student Nurse and I looked into staff shortages for example. I did a whole assignment on it. And even then I could see, and I thought to myself, How is our NHS gonna run?

Because looking at it as a student Nurse writing about staff shortages, I could see it then. And that was in 2018. This is four years later and it's just got worse. Why isn't anyone doing anything about it?

Why arn't things being put in place? Why isn't our government doing more to save our NHS? And this is the problem. This is why people are striking.

People are dying. This is what it's come to. Patients are dying unnecessarily at home. I'm seeing on social media. I'm seeing people crying their eyes out because their dad or their nan or the family member of some sort or even a friend has been left to die in a waiting room because they've had a heart attack.

They can't get some fast enough because they've had that heart attack.

Preventable Deaths Are Happening Every Single Day

They're understaffed. They're dealing with 101 different things already. This is what our NHS is at the minute.

Massive backlogs, patients dying unnecessarily. Preventable deaths are happening every single day. What's being done about it? Sorry, I was getting really, really emotional.

I could feel myself getting closer and closer to the cameras. I was getting angrier and angrier about all these changes in the governments and cuts and things like that. But this is what, this is what I'm saying, it's years of cuts by our government.

Community, primary care, everywhere that is just backlogged. It's backlogged. The waiting times that are just ridiculous because there's no staff.

It's years of being undervalued. It's years of pay freezes. It's horrific, and it's not getting any better. And something needs to be done. Something needs to be done now. We don't have the time.

We can't wait any longer. That was my dad. My dad sat in the cold without any food waiting to be seen. He could have died in that chair. He had a severe kidney infection, he had severe dehydration.

He had a load of things going on. What if that turned into sepsis? What if that caught him in the night? He was very, very lucky that didn't happen. And he was okay. He's okay by the way. It's a happy story.

He is okay-ish. He's out of hospital now. He's back home. But it just hits you harder when it's your own family. It's when you see it on the news, when you see it on social media, you obviously have a lot of the empathy.

You obviously feel very sad and frustrated and things for that people. But when it's your own family, your own flesh and blood, it really, really, really makes you pick up.

This Is Why I Support The Nursing Strikes

So am I in support of the strikes? I think you've just had your answer in that very long explanation of my dad and everything. Of course I am. Yes I am. And do you know what people don't realize?

I keep seeing it again on social media. People saying, "Oh, what about the waiting times? What about people dying and blah blah, blah." People don't realize this is an organized strike.

This isn't a mass walkout. We're all just gonna leave people to die. That's not gonna happen. This is an organized strike. You can only go if you're on the Agenda for Change.

You can only go if your patients are safe. Management teams and all of that have to put things in place to make sure the patients are seen, that nobody's gonna die as a result of this.

Our NMC, Nursing and Midwifery Council, and the GMC, the General Medical Council, have put things in place as well for strike action. And it says we cannot ever risk patient safety regardless.

And that is something we all abide by. So I want everyone to be rest assured. Things will be put in place, but there is a strike action. Waiting times will absolutely go up a little bit, 'cause things like operations and things like that might be delayed because of it.

GP appointments and things like that might be delayed. But a lot of GPs aren't on the Agenda for Change. So they wouldn't be striking. It's only if they're gonna support them and things like that on the day if they've got a day off or something.

But you know what? Waiting times are already horrific, and preventable deaths are happening every single day. We need this strike action to make our NHS better, to make the future of nursing better, to give better care to patients, safe effective care to patients.

This is why we are striking because we care about our patients. We love our patients. And it's got to the point where that is being really massively affected. Patient safety is affected, and it needs to stop.

And this is why Nurses are doing it, because we care about our patients and we want a change for the future.

Who Is Eligible To Strike?

A little bit of information if you're a student Nurse watching this whether you're allowed to strike or not. If you've had a ballot from the RCN, it means that you're probably on the Agenda for Change.

If you are working in the NHS somewhere as a healthcare assistant, something like that, or even Nurse apprenticeships maybe, if you are on the NHS Agenda for Change, you can strike.

However, if you're a student Nurse and you are not on Agenda for Change, you won't be able to strike. You can go as a member of the public. So you can go on the picket line.

You can support as a member of the public, but you're not allowed to be a striker person, if that makes any sense. I don't know what difference it makes. If you want to go there and be there, you go for it.

But we shouldn't be putting our patients at risk. If you're on placement and things like that, make sure that you are not on placement if you're gonna go, that sort of thing.

Make sure that you're professional and all of that jazz. So, which NHS trusts or hospitals are striking. I'm gonna put a reel here so you can see exactly what NHS trusts and hospitals are striking.

As you can see, there is a lot. And every NHS trust will have their own guidelines, their own policies, their own procedures for strike actions. So make sure you adhere to your own trust policies because I'm assuming that all gonna be different in every trust.

Wherever you are working will have something different, and everyone will be organizing their own strikes. So just keep an eye out on bulletins, newsletters. Speak to your management, speak to your teams and things like that if you wanna get involved and take part of the strike action if you are eligible.

Also on the Royal College of Nursing website they have a strike hub. If you Google RCN Strike Hub, it'll come up. It's got all of the dates, it's got all of the NHS trust. If you click on the links, it tells you the times and places and things like that. It gives you a lot more information.

Get Out There And Show Your Support

So have a look at your own trust and see what's going on, and see if you can take part if eligible. If it's your day off or something and you wanna go as member of the public to get involved and show your support, please, please do.

Because this all really mean a lot to the Nurses out there. Feel free to, please. I really encourage as well, everybody to share it across social media. Tag the government in it, tag the newspapers in it, get it out there.

But you know what? Waiting times are already horrific, and preventable deaths are happening every single day. We need this strike action to make our NHS better

So what is the benefit of strike action? Something this big is gonna make the government listen. It's hopefully gonna make the government listen. It's gonna put the pressure on governments and management teams and things like that to listen to the voice of Nurses, to see we've had enough, that things need to change.

We want a better pay, we want better terms, we want better conditions. And if those aren't met, assume we'll continue to strike.

Yeah, good luck and thank you to everybody who is striking. And here is to a better future and big, big changes happening in our NHS.