Are Nurses less compasionate than they used to be ?

Well, well, well, doesn't that come as something of a surprise, The Torygraph not wasting an opportunity to centre the blame for problems within the NHS on nurses.

I always found the nurses who resided on the Weston Road far more “passionate” than the their counterparts who occupied the Corporation Street lodgings (circa early 1980s)

Perhaps being underpaid, over-worked and constantly being set crazy targets has something to do with it!

Not to mention the over-paid and over-staffed managers!

Nurses are not underpaid especially compared to living in this area and the average wage earned locally

Would they be 'incentivised' toward more compassion with the promise of a potential £1.75m bonus do you think?

Or would they merely sit on their £1.2m pay packet and not give a shit?

What has this got to do with nurses being less compassionate and underpayed. There are no million pound salaries or bonuses for them but they are still well payed especially when living in the midlands and a good quality of life can be had. In terms of compassion there are many factors involved in a working day which would lead to to a nurse conveying compassion towards a patient and also how that patient perceives compassion. The biggest factor is the expectation of the patient.

Moley said:

What has this got to do with nurses being less compassionate and underpayed.

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Pardon me - i was being a bit sarky about the relative worth we place on different occupations.

I am fortunate enough to not have had enough contact with the nursing profession to know whether they are more or less compassionate than they used to be. I have a higher regard for nurses than i do bankers though.

The one time i did spend any amount of time in hospital i had nothing but admiration for the nurses on my ward. The 'expectation of the patient' you mention is a good point - my expectations at the time stretched to being kept alive, which they managed admirably. I don't ask for much.

oh dear the old pearl "average wage" has risen its ugly head again.
what is wrong with paying poeple what they are worth? nurses, fire officers, police and other public support sector workers are doing a job to coin a phrase "serve and protect" and i have the upmost respect for what they do.
stressfull conditions play part of thier job roles every day in thier working life and others expect them to be happy to be paid the same as say a shelf stacker.
instead of expecting these poeple to go the extra mile on their allready strechted own back, why not give them a little incentive?
im sure if everybody was in a pretty much thankless job where most people probably havent got the manners to be cicvil to you then they would be a little less compasionet.

Moley said:

Nurses are not underpaid especially compared to living in this area and the average wage earned locally

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Fair comment

Average wage

There are no figures for an average wage - there are figures for an arathemtic mean of known data on earnings for the UK as a whole

An average wage is not representative of the mean of a majority of workers, more a hypothetical figure distorted by the super rich and the super poor

DId I just invent the super poor?

I wonder if modern patients might be a bit more trouble..?