Nurses do not currently need degrees, but must take extra training to climb the NHS ladder.
Here is a quick breakdown of nursing posts, responsibilities and salaries.
Role: Nurse consultantNumber: 860Salary: £38k - £65kRole: Providing expert advice to patients and junior staff, and co-ordinating clinical research.Required qualifications: Diploma plus significant experience and specialist training.
Role: Modern matron/community matronNumber: 6,800Salary: £38k - £46kRole: Supervising ward managers, ensuring cleanliness standards are met and training junior staffRequired qualifications: Diploma plus specialist training, or experience equivalent to a master’s degree
Role: Nurse managerNumber: 7,600Salary: £30k - £40kRole: Managing wards and budgets, in addition to clinical work assessing and caring for patientsRequired qualifications: Diploma plus managerial training
Role: Nurse specialist/ team leaderNumber: Approx 40,000Salary: £25k - £34kRole: Taking lead in care for patients suffering from particular conditions, eg diabetes or Parkinson'sRequired qualifications: Diploma plus specialist clinical training
Role: MidwifeNumber: 25,000Salary: £25k - £34kRole: Supporting women during pregnancy and taking lead during labour and birthRequired qualifications: Degree in midwifery. Qualified nurses can become midwives by completing 18 month course.
Role: NurseNumber: 300,000Salary: £20k - £27kRole: Range of clinical roles from checking temperatures to administering blood transfusions.Required qualifications: Two or three year nursing diploma. Five good GCSEs usually required to win place at diploma course colleges.
Role: Healthcare assistant/auxiliary nurse/clinical support workerNumber: 180,000Salary: £13k - £18kRole: Washing, dressing and feeding and patients, making beds, and monitoring symptoms.Required qualifications: None, although assistants can take NVQs to become clinical support workers and qualify for nursing diploma course.
I have great respect for the majority of nurses, they do a wonderful job in very difficult circumstances.
I know this is over simplifying the situation and some nurses will go ballistic, but these are not my descriptions, so if there are any nurses out there who have the full story let me know.
And be gentle, I haven’t been well you know.
Angus
Angus Dei on all and sundry
AnglishLit
Angus Dei politico
2 comments:
Angus, regarding your last line; they put that on Spike Milligan's tombstone, let them not do so on yours!
As for this crap about degree only Nurses from 2013; we do this at our peril. Most would agree that it a good thing to be educated and have a degree. That Nurses want to improve thier chances of promotion by obtaining higher qualifications is a given but already most and often all ward nursing is undertaken by unqualified and assistants who often are left to monitor patients who are often quite ill. If more and more are to become Nurse Practitioners or Specialists the chances of any actual patient centred care of a high standard will become all the more remote and incidents that I have been witness to, of missed ob's and forgotten protocols will become more likely.
The 'sharp end' hands on nursing by assistants has been and still is an accident in waiting and has often been proved to be so. They do not have the skills and knowledge needed for assessment and care especially post-operative of patients essential needs and safety. The 'dumbing down' of the NHS is reaching bizarre and dangerous levels and the addition of more degrees is not going to improve it unless at the same time ward and A&E care is led by this new cohort in actually getting thier hands dirty. We need more nurses, but only those prepared to 'nurse'. Not sit in an office writing reports and doing staff rota's. It's bad enough that Doctors and Consultants practise remote medicine. If all the nurses do it too because they've got a degree where is the poor old patient left? Up s**t creek springs to mind.
Blackdog I totally agree with you, if the first four "entries" were done away with maybe with the exception of 'proper' matrons (one per hospital), and those 'nurses' were put back on the wards to actually nurse patients things would improve, I feel that part of the role of doctors and in particular consultants is to "give expert advice" and budgeting should be left to the number crunchers.
Nursing should be taught on the wards not in a university.
Now I am going back to the bunker:)
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