Bitter?… NAH
Nursing a grudge
THERE'S never any money for nurses, but there's always extra money for teachers. Considering their performance in the classroom is appalling, why are they always in line for more money?Teachers are entitled to four weeks' annual leave, so why do they take another eight weeks' annual leave, as well as curriculum days?
They should have all their student-free days on the holidays, as well as run catch-up classes for underachieving students, without being paid any extra money. I think taxpayers, parents and students are being ripped off.
For a change, wouldn't it be nice if the hardworking nurses in this country were given some credit in the form of money, not the pat on the back that the Government believes will pay our bills. We, along with doctors, do many hours of unpaid overtime to prop up an ailing health system, yet our wages and working conditions have been going backwards for years.
Not one government has ever considered rewarding nurses, but they will bend over backwards for teachers.
Ann Lowe, Malvern East
Listen honey, going the biff on teachers isn't going to redirect the money to you poor nurses. It might be a little hard to understand but that's just not the way things work.
You can't state as fact, "their performance in the classroom is appalling". While some from the right do like to get out and go teacher bashing, the great majority of people know that this is simply hyperbole and lies.
If you weren't aware, teachers and nurses are very much in the same basket when it comes to funding from governments. Teachers have been just as screwed over as you nurses in recent times. The unfortunate thing for nurses, as you've pointed out, is that you are basically emotionally blackmailed into working more for no money because the health system isn't properly funded. If you really wanted to be heard and maybe effect some change, try a work to rule campaign or refusing overtime. If everyone does it, you'll shortly have some attention.
Maybe you're just a bit jealous that the federal government has been focusing on teachers, with Julie Bishop and John Howard talking about bonus pay for exceptional teachers so as to provide incentive for teachers to better themselves. This isn't actually because they want to give more money to the better teachers. While they suggest they will give with one hand, what it actually does is take away more power for the federal government with the other hand, by attaching requirements such as what history curriculum is taught to high school students. (It's actually just a big ploy to stop people thinking for themselves and learning about some of the disgraceful events in this nation's history but Shhhh, don't tell anyone.)
If your letter is really an indication of where you're coming from, I'm surprised you got into nursing. You didn't really do it for the money did you? Where did you get the impression you were going to be raking it in? I hope that's not how the tertiary institutions are selling it. And I hope not too many other people are falling for it.
Tell you what, it's not too late to salvage this. Just quickly find yourself a nice bloke - ooh, you could probably snare yourself a rich doctor! - put your legs up and start counting the bonus coming to you in 9 months time. That way you'll be able to just stay at home living a life of leisure on handouts and not have to put up with any more of that crap from your patients.
May 29th, 2007 - 14:50
Nursing sucks! At least teachers have the brains and balls to organize a union so they can have some hope of fair treatment. All nurses do is bitch and backstab… that is why I left that profession full of crazies…Nurses wouldn’t know how to stick together if their life depended upon it. They do just what Ann is doing… cry and bitch about it.
June 10th, 2007 - 06:17
Who could be more bitter than a failed nurse. Have a cry and a bitch, Linda.
June 13th, 2007 - 11:14
Who said anything about “failed”? Is this something you assumed? You obviously are one of those “crazies” incapable of using reason and/or logic. Don’t take your hostility,hatred and frustration on someone who simply speaks the truth. Everyone knows nursing sucks and is full of hostile old maids with a huge problem with “horizontal violence” Use some of your sign on bonus money and go get some much needed therapy, Jan.
February 7th, 2008 - 02:15
you all seem unhappy in some respect, thats evident by 1. participating in this discussion and 2. from the tone of conversations.
Thats ok, but I really don’t think we should take it out on each other. Im a registered nurse, highly specialised with post grad diploma and masters, however, have to state emphatically, my experience in Victoria’s, Queenslands, Tasmania’s and NSW’s Mental Health System is not the system, but, the nurses themselves.
Its true, horizontal violence is insatiable, its a plague, a virus spreading itself, ‘only nurses eat their young’ is what someone told me in my first month out of uni some four almost five years ago.
I spent seven years in the Australian Army before becomming a nurse. Never in my life have I been ridiculed, ‘brow beaten’, attacked, manipulated, backstabbed, lied to, it goes on and on, as much as I have since being a nurse, for a man who humped it out in an infantry battalion for most of his military career, that speaks for something.
As for pay. It is simply APPALLING. I earnt only $200 less per week as a soldier with rank of private in 1997 than I do in all my glory as a nurse. The advanced post grad dip and masters in addition to the 3 year bachelors degree I’ve completed, despite working in mental health for the past comming on my fifth year, my ‘clinical nurse specialist’ (CNS)application here in NSW was rejected, the nurses on the panel telling me the work I was doing was more like a ‘psychologists role’. The CNS pay would have put me at par with my community mental health counterparts in VIC in terms of pay, which would have been RN Grade 3A year 1. Unfortunately, after tax and no other deductions each week, instead I clear $720 for the week only. Some may say hey thats not bad. I say, try feeding a family, paying day care, a mortgage, car repayment, phone, electricity, etc etc, its just not possible. Not to mention, one of my brother in laws earns $20 p/w more a scaffolder and the other $5 p/w more as a 3rd year electricians apprentice.
Add to the indignation of having no additional holidays, being run off your feet all day, having mental health patients abuse you and the only outcome can be high attrition rates in the nursing work fore. But when you consider that there are approximately 25’000 registered nurses in VIC alone, it is simply cheaper to replace the nursing workforce every five years than to give those 25000 nurses a pay rise or proper working conditions.
When I left uni at the end of 2003, an ABS figure quoted to our graduating year was that 85% of the nursing workforce will leave the field within the first five years of graduating, so far, from what I have seen with my graduating colleagues, this has not been the case. I think its because there is simply no other field except maybe ‘pharmacuetical sales rep’ that a nursing degree will help you get into. The bottom line is, I F*#Cking hate nursing, if I didn’t have a family to support, I’d leave it this instant. But when all else fails, do permanent nights.
Really, I should have done buisness!!!!
February 13th, 2008 - 14:17
With your generalisation that teacher’s “performance in the classroom is appalling” you have made me ask the question, why subscribe to this blog?
Ignoring this ridiculous statement, I would like to address what you might be trying to say.
Teachers and nurses are both important to society. Why do teachers get more holidays to supplement the short teaching year? Probably because teaching has become the profession that no-one wants to join. As a teacher, it is very frustrating teaching students who have no ambition. It is not always the teacher’s fault that students perform poorly; parents need to take a complementary role to assist the teacher by ensuring children do homework and respect the authority of the teacher. The result of not doing this must be very obvious – the teacher’s task is impossible. The pay is poor by the way.
Regarding nurses, whose job is equally important in many ways – talk to your government whose love of money is the root of the problem. Start a union with some power.
It is all about politics.
February 13th, 2008 - 15:41
Just to clarify for ml, I’m taking issue with Ann Lowe from Malvern East over her claim that, “their performance in the classroom is appalling”.
Teachers and nurses are both in professions where the bulk of the members are government employed and are both underpaid for the work they do. I can only imagine that, by attacking teachers, Ann Lowe thinks it’s going to strengthen the argument for nurses to be better paid. She’s clearly mistaken.
April 15th, 2008 - 15:05
I dont really understand everyone being so negative. Pharmacuetical sales rep is not the only job to go into. My sister worked as a wound care specialist/sales rep for smith and nephew and she gets paid really well. IU agree nurses really rubbish other nurses. I am a nurse I hear it but if you want out there are other jobs out there you just have to look and want them bad enough. As for nursing we are all our own worst enemies. If we just stopped bagging each other for five minutes it would make for a better work environment but instead to make themselves feel more important they put down others.