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What are our nurses really worth?

Vic Barlow
9/ 3/2005

IF, by any chance, you have read the vacancy board at Macclesfield Hospital you will see they require a staff nurse, salary approx £18,000pa and a bed manager salary circa £28,000pa.

I'm sure 'bed manager' is an important role, but I'm wondering if they have the salaries the wrong way around?

I've been in hospital on a number of occasions and I don't ever recall hearing a distressed patient screaming for a 'manager'.

"Help! My waters have burst, get me a manager." I don't think so.

Now, I could be wrong here, but if you asked a 100 sick patients whose services they most valued I doubt 'manager' would be in the top ten while 'nurse' would undoubtedly be in the top two.

So, I'm struggling with the concept of a 'manager' (however good he or she may be) earning 55 per cent more than a nurse.

In fact, I find the whole idea of paying 'managers' so much more than hard-pressed nurses totally unjust.

Maybe if we switched the salary scales around our hospitals would attract a lot more nurses and fewer managers. If there's one thing the NHS doesn't have it's a manager shortage. When did you last hear of a hospital having to travel overseas to recruit managers?

Day after day, night after night, nurses are tending to the needs of sick patients; some recover, others do not.

It's an emotionally and physically draining vocation and unless we value them accordingly we're always going to have a shortage.

Meanwhile I await in earnest my first letter from an ex patient that begins: "After my accident I spent seven agonising weeks in hospital and had it not been for all the managers I would have never recovered."

• THE views expressed on this page are those of Vic Barlow and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Express.