NHS pay

6% over three years = 2% per annum. Inflation is currently running at 3% per annum.

A rise below the rate of inflation = a cut. Somewhat smaller cut than just lately admittedly. Big woop.

If the teachers don’t a similar or better deal soon, expect disruption to your children’s education.

Looks like I’ll be getting 24.89%, which is nice!

However, I would also like to be able to go to work and not feel physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted due to the every increasing pressure put on us year-on-year due to increased workload/ decreased staffing levels. I would also like to know that if I needed to call an ambulance for myself or my family that there would be one nearby and available, unfortunately at the moment that often just isn’t the case, and I am pretty sure me getting a massive pay rise is not going to improve these things.

Edited – Tell a lie….pay deal has not been agreed for Wales yet

1.3 million of them. Thats a hell of a percentage of the work force getting a rise at the expense of the rest of the work force, and yes I do know the NHS staff pay tax.

1.3 million of them. Thats a hell of a percentage of the work force getting a rise at the expense of the rest of the work force, and yes I do know the NHS staff pay tax.

@jane While I get where your coming from, the devil’s in the detail. This pay rise is heavily weighted towards the newly qualified in the lower pay bands, at a time when NHS bursaries are coming to an end and recruitment (even without Brexit) is in crisis.

As an example, someone wanting to train as a paramedic now needs to commit to a 3 year Bsc at £9250 p.a. tuition, minimal holidays to earn extra cash and 50% of the time on placement (shifts) so hard to get part time work. Additional costs include a few hundred on textbooks, £60 for a stethoscope, a pulse oximeter, a few hundred for parking when on hospital placement, you’ve got to have your own vehicle to get to your placement stations and before you can get a job you’ll need to pass your C1 license (£800-1000).

All this at a time when many studies are putting a newly qualified paras frontline career span at around 10 years due to high rates of mental and physical burnout.

Current starting salary for a newly qualified paramedic – £22,000 (Band 5 basic, excluding unsociable hours pay at 25%).

Market forces and all that, if you want skilled and professional people turning up to medical emergencies, you’ll have to provide wages that aren’t completely derisory.

While I’m sure none of them are going to complain about the deal, and I certainly don’t begrudge them it, I suspect putting more money into improving the working conditions and hours would benefit many of them even more.

My husband’s cousin is a junior doctor in Edinburgh, but has worked as a doctor in South Africa and New Zealand too. She says working life here is dire compared to other health services that she has worked in. More money, while always welcome, doesn’t reduce stress from overcrowded and underfunded services or make up for the fact that doctors can’t plan their lives more than 6 weeks in advance etc.

Surely more NHS workers are needed? Unless they are going to spend the money on lots of caffeine to keep them alert more during their shifts? …but I guess bigger pay means working for the NHS is more attractive.

However, I would also like to be able to go to work and not feel physically, mentally and emotionally exhausted due to the every increasing pressure put on us year-on-year due to increased workload/ decreased staffing levels.

@mo Who doesn’t work under pressure – tell me one job where there is no pressure?

(I’m not really getting at just you, more about those who constantly are under the impression that they are the only ones who work under pressure – as if the rest of the workforce have no pressure on them at all)

Who doesn’t work under pressure – tell me one job where there is no pressure?

@prashobh Depends on your measure of pressure. Is pressure from a corporate world comparable to that of a front line ambulance worker out on the road, like SAF or a nurse, doctor or any number of health care professional making time critical decisions that could affect an individual with dire consequences?

I’ve worked in both worlds, and both are stressful. How that stress is measured with financial compensation for it, is an interesting discussion.

Who doesn’t work under pressure – tell me one job where there is no pressure

@prashobh There are different types of pressure, working on an rrv when there is no back up available and you’ve got a child in front of you who is critically ill and not responding to treatment, and your only choice is to sit it out, or put him in the car (a decision that management would never support if it wasn’t a positive outcome) and transport to hospital, all the time unable to monitor and treat the child. And if that child dies being subject to a massive PRUDIC investigation (something I have fortunately not experienced but is apparently hideous).

Then getting sent straight to another job that sees your 12 hour shift finish 2 hours late, and where your are subject to personal abuse due to the delay in these people getting an ambulance to lift their morbidly obese relative off the floor, which your can’t do anyway because you’re on your own… So cue more abuse!

Yes, there were other jobs with pressure and there are different types of pressure, but at the moment in the front line NHS services we are subject to the full range of pressures and sometimes all in one shift!

I’d happily take 6% rather than the net pay cut (before inflation) that I’ve received in the public sector.

I wonder how combat medical technicians might feel about the comparison that NHS workers are the only ones that experience pressure. An interesting job comparison maybe? I wonder, is stress and therefore deserved reimbursement reduced when someone is trying to kill you whilst you manage a patient?

My comparison isn’t to suggest that X or Y is more worthy or deserves more pay. Far from it. Merely to suggest that whoever shouts the loudest gets the best deal. And 1.3 million people can shout pretty loud.

The tories aren’t doing it because they believe in the NHS. They are doing it as a political calculation:

a. They can’t afford another big fight in the run up to Brexit.

b. New money for the NHS provides some cover for the Brexiters £350 million a week extra for the NHS. It doesn’t matter that 52 x 350 is about 4x more than 4 billion because Brexiters don’t do maths. Next time somebody asks Johnson about that bus he can come out with this and pretend it’s all true.

c. Medium term the NHS wage bill getting out of control is good for the Tories. They want to sell it off and make people buy health insurance from their pals in the City. Wages getting out of control helps them make the case that it is unsustainable.

They could maybe do stuff like this if it wasn’t for Brexit but it is going to turn to ten kinds of sh*t if they don’t keep a lid on the public sector wage bill at the same time as Brexit f*cks up the rest of the economy and makes the markets jittery about the pound.