I earn £36,000 a year, approximately. I am a Band 6 experienced nurse, and began working in the health service in 2003. The money is not a lot for my experience, and my salary doesn’t stretch very far in the south-east. But I share the bills with my partner, who earns three times as much as me. I am in a fortunate financial situation.

Other nurses aren’t, I know. Some of my Band 5 colleagues (earning £27,000 a year) are struggling with their bills, and two of the newly-qualified nurses at work use food banks. I voted to strike for these colleagues.

But for many other reasons too.

I can’t do this job past 40

I am in my thirties, and I know I cannot do this job after the age of 40. It’s too physically tough. I keep my phone in my scrubs’ pocket on shifts, and on each 12-hour shift my phone routinely records that I have walked between 5 – 9 miles. On one occasion, I’d walked 12 miles in one shift. My feet look a state, yes. But that’s not really the problem. My knees and hips ache, to the point that I wear runners’ knee supports at work. My body hurts constantly. And you’d think, I’d be skinny, but I’m not, because I’m so miserable by the time I get home that I eat my weight in junk food. Not a great plan, but that’s how it is.

On most shifts, I do get a lunchbreak, as our senior nurses are passionate about that and insist on it. But by the time I get lunch it’s often 5pm. So I won’t have eaten from 7am until 5pm, on most shifts. It’s a long bloody time to go without food, and it makes a hard job harder.

The other problem is that our hospital management insist that we cannot have water bottles in the clinical area. They say it makes the ward look untidy. What this means is, that we are not allowed to keep water bottles at the nurses’ station anymore. The only place water bottles are allowed is in the staff room. But on most shifts I don’t have time to go to the toilet, let alone go into the staff room and get a water bottle out of my bag. In reality, it means not drinking very much for 12-hours.

On the average shift that I work, my joints ache, and I don’t eat or drink for most of it. But yet, if I make a mistake, I will be investigated. And worse, a patient will be (unintentionally) harmed.

Just to be clear – I’m not writing this for sympathy. I am anonymous. I don’t gain anything from writing this. It’s simply reality, and I am putting it into words, because it’s important that people understand life in the NHS. We all pay for it.

Constant jetlag

On top of that, nursing shift patterns work to ensure that hospital nurses are constantly jetlagged.

I work a mixture of day and night shifts. Day shifts are 7.30am until 8.30pm, and night shifts are 7.30pm until 8.30pm. They rotate constantly. For example, last week I worked night shifts on: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. I came off that final night shift on Saturday morning at 8.30am. I went home shattered, had a shower and slept for a few hours, and woke up at around 5pm. I got to enjoy a Saturday evening off work, and I sat there staring at the telly, because I was too numb and exhausted to function. I ordered a take away. The most calorific, comforting one I could, and drank a half bottle of wine. Then I fell asleep again.

I hadn’t seen my partner all week, because by the time he got home from work (at 7pm on most nights), I was typically on my way to another night shift. By Saturday evening, I hadn’t seen him in five days. But I was way too tired to have sex or even give him much attention. I just wanted to eat, sleep, and recover.

I slept that Saturday night, very well. But I spent Sunday (my only proper day off) dreading the next day. Because the shift pattern for the following week was day shifts on: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. And it would be more off the same crap conditions, short-staffing and overwork.

Little sleep in-between shifts

In-between shifts, I only get about 4 – 6 hours sleep. So there is no physical recovery time. I get home at about 10pm on most days (the shift should finish by 8.30pm, but doesn’t finish until 8.45-9pm most of the time, I then have an hour-long commute home). Once I am home, I make my dinner and I shower/brush my teeth. This takes me until 11pm at least. I am usually sleeping by 11.30pm or midnight.

I then wake up at 5am. That’s because my shift starts at 7.30am, but it takes me an hour to get to work and sometimes I contend with train delays. So, I need to leave at 6am if I am to get to work on time, notwithstanding delays. That means getting up at 5am to get ready and make a packed lunch.

I don’t want this life for myself anymore. I want something easier on my body and my mind. There is no time to reflect when there is such little time, so all the feelings that I experience on a shift (if a patient dies, or if a patient is physically aggressive towards me), that all gets pushed down. I have ended up a bit of a zombie, getting through life, and experiencing none of it.

To sum it all up…

There’s plenty more I could write. But I think I have depressed my readers enough for one evening. So, apologies about that – genuinely – this is the most miserable post you could read. And that’s the problem, it’s a fucking miserable life as a nurse, which is why anyone capable leaves.

Essentially, I hope this post explains some of the reasons why I voted to strike. It’s not because I am a heartless witch who doesn’t care if patients die. It’s because I can’t cope anymore, physically or mentally.