Nurses deserve to be rewarded

They take a timely look at how senior staff can help maximise the impact of learning on practice, and have come up with nine suggestions for nurses in managerial positions (pages 30-36). They say the findings ‘support the positive role that managers play in developing robust processes for CPE’.

One of the nine suggestions, that ‘managers can be instrumental in celebrating success’, is especially timely as we prepare to shortlist the scores of nominations submitted for the RCNi Nurse Awards in May.

Celebration of success should not overshadow the care that nurses provide, and for which they should be financially rewarded fairly

Recognising the value and achievements of nursing also features in celebrations to mark the RCN’s centenary next month. Events include a Care on Camera photography competition (page 6) and an exhibition entitled The Voice of Nursing, which opened last month at the college’s London headquarters (page 11). The college also plans to hold a centenary conference in November.

But celebrations of success should not overshadow the amazing care that nurses provide every day, and for which they should be fairly rewarded financially.

I am writing this editorial a few hours after junior doctors began their first of three scheduled days of strike in a dispute with the government over their new contract, a move that has followed widespread protest among nurses over controversial plans to abolish student bursaries. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland, health minister Simon Hamilton has recently announced the NHS pay award, which suggests that nurses there face a hard future.

Certainly let us celebrate success, as Professor Draper and colleagues suggest, as a way of ensuring that nurses’ CPE improves patient care. But we must also support what nurses do daily to maintain service excellence, and we can do this by backing their calls for fair pay.