New Nurses Work For Less Than Minimum Wage

Newly qualified nurses desperate for a job are working for less than the minimum wage, it emerged today. The County Durham and Darlington NHS foundation trust and North Tees and the Hartlepool NHS trust are offering “honorary” training contracts to some nurses unable to secure other work.

There is no guarantee of a job at the end of the contract, which is being run in conjunction with the University of Teesside.

Aidan Mullan, the director of nursing at the North Tees trust, told today’s Nursing Standard magazine: “We were unable to offer places to every newly qualified nurse who had an interest in working in the trust. The [honorary] places were to be supernumerary with the emphasis on development, not on the person being a spare pair of hands.”

But Peter Carter, the general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing said trusts were not paying the nurses properly “because they are struggling to balance their books because of NHS deficits”.

He added: “This is yet another example of nurses and ultimately patients having to pay for failures in the system. We are training nurses that are desperately needed, and then not giving them jobs. It is a terrible waste of their skills, it is wrong that they should have to work for free or below the minimum wage. The government should be tackling this issue as a matter of urgency. It is vital that newly qualified nurses get this period of preceptorship.”

Today’s report follows a move by Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS trust to encourage existing staff to resign, work for no pay or take unpaid leave in order to reduce its multimillion-pound deficit.

In a letter to staff last month the trust said “just one extra day of work without additional pay as a voluntary contribution” would help to avoid “significant job losses”. The trust is predicted to be £5m over budget at the end of the financial year.

Jobs for nurses have been cut as many NHS trusts impose a recruitment freeze to try to reduce predicted financial deficits by the end of March.

County Durham and Darlington NHS foundation trust is offering a four-month “honorary” preceptorship programme. There is a training allowance of £480 – an estimated hourly rate of £2.60, it said.

Nursing director Laura Robson said they saw the scheme as a way of improving the nurses’ chances of gaining employment. “It can be difficult if you are a newly-qualified nurse and cannot find a job,” she said. “We have therefore designed a structured four-month programme, including mentoring, experience on the wards in a supernumerary capacity and a series of classroom-based study days.

“We see the scheme as a way of improving the nurses’ chances of gaining employment. Seven nurses completed the programme in September. Three are now working on the trust’s nurse bank and four have secured posts, two with this trust and two with other NHS trusts in the area.”

Professor Paul Keane, dean of the school of health and social care at the University of Teesside, said every effort was being made to obtain employment for graduates. “The purpose of this temporary initiative is to ensure that graduates retain their skills so that when vacancies occur, they remain well prepared for the roles in question and, more importantly, continue to meet the requirements of fitness for practice and profession.”