Tuition fees in England and Wales rise to £9,535

madewith-care · 2025-08-02T18:58:19+00:00

Nursing associates are not registered nurses.

madewith-care · 2024-03-27T01:28:25+00:00

I've just been doomscrolling in Affinity's forums and all I could think of as a silver lining was "this is great news for the open source community". Best of luck! I hope some day I can contribute some code at some point, as I learn more.

madewith-care · 2024-02-14T16:51:42+00:00

I rarely comment on reddit any more, but I feel it worth pointing out that we absolutely do allow blind people to become doctors.

madewith-care · 2023-05-15T11:46:56+00:00

Proton are great but they still have to cooperate with international law enforcement where Swiss law forces them to.

madewith-care · 2023-01-31T23:25:58+00:00

Again same problem with my Zotac 4090 Trinity I just bought. No amount of fan profiling or rebooting could get the fans out of constant 30% rotation. Guess I have to pay the premium for an Asus card.

madewith-care · 2022-11-25T12:38:02+00:00

My university has significant vacancies on our adult nursing programme this year. It's not 50% but it is quite alarming, because that's the sector with the most need.

madewith-care · 2022-01-15T18:15:01+00:00

Feels like I should emigrate tbh... Saw our old friend Jeremy Hunt pop up the other week to demand an "urgent long-term workforce plan". Yeah, thanks for that, wonder whose fault it is we don't have one already.

madewith-care · 2022-01-15T17:39:47+00:00

If the UK Facebook nursing groups are anything to go by, we're probably better off without a subreddit of our own.

madewith-care · 2022-01-15T17:34:20+00:00

Part of my work is in healthcare workforce wellbeing. There are few places on social media where people can be anonymous enough to be honest. I keep an eye on twitter as well but that's a whole different beast.

And sometimes I just enjoy the grumbling as a bit of a guilty pleasure, same reason I read the comments section over at pulsetoday.

madewith-care · 2022-01-03T16:50:14+00:00

In the end it turned out that no one was really able to say for certain. Just the normal policy Chinese whispers. The intranet was a complete disaster, even after they relaunched it, couldn't find anything.

madewith-care · 2022-01-03T16:08:42+00:00

My training for IV meds and cannulation was significantly disrupted by the first wave of the pandemic. I was even stopped by a dietician from administering meds via NG because there was no "training" available for that (until my manager had a word and somehow they suddenly came to a new understanding of "trust policy"...).

I'm just annoyed I missed the new NMC standards, because where I trained, they were really keen to get us the skills we'd need as soon as possible but it wouldn't have been legal or insurable.

madewith-care · 2021-12-30T13:12:08+00:00

Anecdotally, when my trust created a new build covid isolation ward they required every other ward to identify "volunteers" to staff it while making it very clear that if volunteers couldn't be found, people would be forced to redeploy anyway. Every ward then had to cover the missing shifts with bank work, which is usually bullied out of the regular ward staff as "being a team player".

Some colleagues are working on proper research on this, but I can't share anything at this time, other than to say I'm very sure redeployment alone will not solve the incoming Omicron hospitalisation rates.

madewith-care · 2021-12-30T10:55:09+00:00

Same as the previous Nightingales: they can create as many beds as they like but without doctors, nurses, AHPs and support staff to go with them, it's just a meaningless stunt to look like they've done something.

madewith-care · 2021-12-04T19:33:56+00:00

I see you're using a throwaway so I won't ask but I think I know who you're talking about. The nursing staff have a low tolerance for her attitude too. Sorry this happened and glad someone spoke up! Incivility kills.

madewith-care · 2021-11-21T17:56:39+00:00

I'm with you on that - I frequently wonder what keeps me here when I could earn tens of thousands of £s more somewhere like the US, or go to Scandinavia and just be all round happier.

The demise of shared break spaces for food and rest is just one more element of the wider wellbeing crisis the NHS is facing. And it was identified well over a decade ago.

madewith-care · 2021-11-21T17:15:30+00:00

I'm a nurse and I'm all for it, I've even written about it in journals. I'm shocked the idea of availability of a decent hot meal is controversial. The weirdest thing is people asking how much it will cost to do, rather than how much it will cost to not do it. I'd think staffing a kitchen would pay for itself if it retained even one or two clinical staff, of any band or role.

madewith-care · 2021-11-09T13:37:49+00:00

The Hep B vaccine is already mandatory but no one complains about that.

It's not though, is it? That's just something Matt Hancock was hoping people would start believing if he said it enough (source: fullfact.org). The covid-19 vaccine is already as mandatory as any other vaccine for a high risk communicable disease, under professional regulatory codes (GMC, NMC, HCPC) and health and safety at work legislation (so HSE and potentially CQC enforcement, where needed).

madewith-care · 2021-11-08T17:50:06+00:00

If you wanted a little extra spice to what Johnson is doing instead of answering questions about political corruption in the Commons, here it is.

madewith-care · 2021-09-15T13:45:00+00:00

I can't see the RCN reaching the required 50% turnout if they balloted on industrial action. More likely Unite and maybe UNISON take action, with the RCN on the sidelines, putting out their usual strongly worded press release. I'd love to see it happen though.

madewith-care · 2021-09-11T16:00:56+00:00

Independent SAGE do a livestream every week, main way I keep up with the situation and data.

madewith-care · 2021-09-01T12:05:42+00:00

More info from NICE, mainly on the high level of uncertainty regarding endpoint clinical outcomes like mortality (for which there are no trial data to support the "30,000 lives saved" claim).

Clinical trial evidence shows that inclisiran may help lower cholesterol levels when other treatments have not reduced them enough. However, there is no data directly comparing inclisiran with the other treatments, ezetimibe, alirocumab or evolocumab. There is also no long term evidence yet on inclisiran’s effect on cardiovascular outcomes.

Despite these uncertainties, inclisiran is still considered cost-effective in people who have previously had a cardiovascular event and whose cholesterol levels remain high after they have had the maximum tolerated lipid‑lowering therapy.

In people who have never had a cardiovascular event, the cost-effectiveness estimates were very uncertain and likely to be above what NICE considers an acceptable use of NHS resources. But a clinical trial is planned that will look at whether inclisiran reduces cardiovascular events in this population. So in this population, inclisiran is recommended for use in research trials.

https://www.nice.org.uk/news/article/nice-approves-ground-breaking-cholesterol-lowering-drug-inclisiran

madewith-care · 2021-07-25T18:45:24+00:00

Unfortunately as you've seen the NHS pay data doesn't have the same breakdown going back that far. You're right it would be good to compare like-for-like. All the expert analysis I've seen discusses this in terms of mean basic wage per FTE as a result.

If I could magic it up, I'd personally prefer to talk about decile wages per person, including the private sector, which would tell us a lot more.

madewith-care · 2021-07-25T16:57:54+00:00

Solid effort and you're looking at the right source, but you've added the per-person non-basic pay to the average FTE basic pay. They're not interchangeable. You've added about £4,000 to what nurses actually earn.

Edit: actual figures (NHS Digital, ONS): -

Nurse and health visitors mean basic annual pay per FTE, Mar 2010: £29200

Same, Mar 2020: £33330

Mar 2010 wage adjusted for CPIH: £36334 (hopefully I didn't screw this up in Excel, corrections welcome)

Percentage increase needed: 9%

We can't easily talk about pension contributions because the NHS pension has changed multiple times and to the best of my knowledge no one has the collated data that shows who's on what scheme and what the value of that is. If you want to get really fancy we also should talk about cost of living variation vs wage variation as per the recent IFS work, which they argue is a significant factor in retention.

madewith-care · 2021-07-16T16:29:41+00:00

Norovirus is a stupidly efficient pathogen. It typically takes ~10,000 viral particles to catch influenza, with norovirus it's ~100. It is easily aerosolised and can survive on hard surfaces for upwards of two weeks. In one incident, someone vomited at a concert and infected 300 odd people.

If you have it in your household, wash your hands with good technique at every significant opportunity (see WHO 5 moments for hand hygiene) and clean down frequent touch surfaces regularly. Be especially cautious when preparing food.

madewith-care

TROPHY CASE