Watching my wife who qualified end of last year have to completely change trajectory is really heartbreaking actually
Hi so full disclosure I am not a nurse, however my wife is newly qualified and my mum was also a nurse for several years before working in management up until very recently.
My lovely wife, who has a first class degree, who aced her placements to where the last one tried very hard to get her a job on their ward which was blocked by the Trust, who has worked in a nursing home all the way throughout her degree as a support worker and was told she couldn’t apply for bank nursing shifts because she wasn’t experienced enough, and who was offered a nursing job after interview before it was pulled due to funding- has now reached the conclusion that she needs to do something else with her life.
We’ve been very lucky that the nursing home she works at has kept her on a support worker and she’s getting hours, and that they aren’t bothered about her having her PIN. But she’s got peers from uni who are on UC, or who are working in coffee shops or in Tesco. She’s looking at charity sector and non profit roles now and seems to be getting interviews, so there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. But at the end of the day, it isn’t nursing.
I know the lack of jobs is like beating a dead horse with a stick, but the brain drain is going to be catastrophic.
My mum, who I mentioned worked in management until recently, has also bought up her concerns over and over to senior leadership and she says they just seem to think it’s a non-issue. This is anecdotal, obviously. Nobody seems to want to listen and it’s actually really worrying.
Just sad for anyone who has worked hard and can’t even get their way into nursing.