Trainee Nurse: Why I Won't Work For The NHS When I Qualify

17 January 2018, 17:31 | Updated: 17 January 2018, 18:16

During an eye-opening call to LBC, this student nurse revealed she'd already ruled out working for the NHS before she has even qualified.

Janet is currently training university, with her course split between the classroom and three 13.5 hour shifts on the wards.

However, she told Iain Dale how that was all unpaid, so would have to take on extra shifts just to make ends meet.

She was speaking after new figures showed one in 10 nurses were leaving the NHS in England each year.

More than 33,000 walked out last year and Janet warned that number would continue to rise unless trainees were treated better.

She said: “You pay £9,000 in fees, you borrow £9,000 to live on, if you're lucky that will pay your rent for the year.

“It won't pay your travel costs, it won't pay your utilities, it won't feed you, so then you have to do shifts.

“You're paid £7.50 an hour to go and be a health care assistant in the NHS, that's fine, but if you're doing three long days on the ward, it gives you four 13.5 hour shifts left to go and supplement your income so that you can eat and get there to do the placement.

“You end up doing six 13.5 hour shifts, three of which you are doing for free.”

During her passionate monologue, Janet continued: “If anything will bring the NHS to its knees, it's going to be a whole generation of people who won't go into the NHS.

“I myself, as soon as I get my pins, will be going into the private health care, I'll not be going into the NHS.

“They've given me nothing, they haven't trained me for free so I haven't got some loyalty to them, no, I will take my pins and I will take it somewhere else because I paid for that education, I paid for that pin.

“You are going to carry on haemorrhaging nurses hand over fist because you're not going to get paid as well as teachers or police officers even though you make life and death situations everyday.”

She finished: "I've seen student nurses almost collapse from exhaustion because they're having to pay so much money out that they're having to do bank shifts, they're doing seven days a week some of them.

"They are physically and mentally exhausted.

"They're studying and they're taking exams and they go to university - this is going to bring the health care system to its knees, not a lack of funding, the way we treat students."

Watch the powerful call in full above.