Young people 'underestimate nursing'

14 August, 2010

The role of the modern-day nurse is underestimated by the majority of youngsters, a poll suggests.

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The findings came in a survey conducted by the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London to mark the 100th anniversary of the nursing heroine’s death.

Many of the 1,000 18-year-old students questioned did not know nurses are authorised to give patients medicines and can also prescribe them.

Other areas the students had misconceptions about were pay and career progression - just 6% knew nurses could earn up to £100,000, while only 25% were aware they could rise to consultant level.

Some 20% of the students, who are studying different academic subjects, said they were more likely to opt for a career in nursing after hearing of the skills and opportunities involved.

Amongst those who had already given thought to a career in the profession, 63% said they were now more likely to follow that path.

Professor Anne Marie Rafferty, head of the school, said:

“It is a worry that many students do not fully understand what a career as a nurse involves.

“We need to challenge and update the image of nursing to tell it as it is - one of the greatest and most rewarding professions providing one of the most precious services to society - compassionate, high-calibre care delivered by outstanding people.”

Readers' comments (37)

Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 12:01 pm
Most people underestimate nurses in my opinion. And who's earning £100k?? Not a huge percentage of nurses I would imagine!
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Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 12:31 pm
I agree yes nurses are underestimated.
But as for the £100k, don't give them false hopes!
Even less nurses will be earning £50k with this government so theres no hope for £100k!
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Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 12:40 pm
Nurse are under estimated. But it takes a long time to reach Consultant Nurse level and a lot of hard work and studying. You should not give false hope to these young nurses. £100 I dont think so and I can never see a nurse achieving this. I am a Consultnat Nurse and certainly do not earn this kind of money - No where near it.

Nurse Prescribing yes after you have been qualified for a while and have a Degree and experience and then the course is not for the faint hearted it is hard work.

Please be realistic in what you are telling the future nurses of tomorrow.
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Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 1:28 pm
I agree with all of the above- it is ridiculous to give people the impression that nurses earn that sort of money. Any one who came into nursing expecting salaries in that region on the strength of that advice would be in for a very rude awakening!
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Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 1:58 pm
I do know AP's that earn somewhere upwards of the £60K mark however I don't think we should attach shame or disapproval to being able to do that, which I hear a lot. I agree with the above comments on getting to that point being incredibly hard work and well deserved.
I also think we are not positively self publicising enough in general about the great things we do and skills we have.
I wonder if we carry a lack of pride and sense of embarrassment around with us for the state of things at the moment.
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Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 2:05 pm
I am sitting here speechless!!! How could anyone involved in nursing make such statements ? It is totally false to emphasize the very few nurses who have reached the top and ignore the daily grind of the majority of nurses who are the backbone of the nursing profession.
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Steve Williams | 13-Aug-2010 2:33 pm
Earn 100K p.a. in nursing? Blimey, mark me down as one of the 6% who didn't know that either! Never heard of it before and I have certainly never met a nurse who was pulling in that much money.

I think it's grossly unfair to raise youngsters expectations so falsely. It's as ridiculous as it would be for RAF recruitment officers to go around telling schoolchildren that you can fly jet aircraft if you just join the service. Sure, it's possible, but only a fraction of the total recruits actually get to do it.

How bitter will these nurses be when they finish their training and then find out what the real average pay and conditions are like?

I'm not advocating preaching the real doom and gloom of the situation they will eventually end up in... but please try and keep it somewhat within the realms of reality!

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Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 2:42 pm
Surely telling young'uns that nurses can earn 100K is counter-productive to getting the payrises nurses deserve... Young people are our bosses of tomorrow!
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mike | 13-Aug-2010 4:31 pm
Okay, I think we are veering slightly off the point here.

As I have said in numerous other posts (usually to the call of people saying TV portrayals are a bit of fun, etc), the truth of the matter is the general public as a whole, not just the young, have very little clue as to what Nurses actually do or what the profession actually is!

The stereotypical image of the Nurse as being an uneducated Doctors assistant who simply makes beds, wipes a few bums and then bow down before the almighty Doctor is a very real one.

And this is a very real problem! Not only for recruitment and retention into the profession, not only for moral and our own professionalism, not only for our struggle in acheiving professional status and pay and working conditions that go with that, but also for our patients, who very often do not realise what we can do for them or what we can help them with and so will not come to us for help.

As for the money issue, a consultant Nurse SHOULD be earning this sort of money, (I know they are not know, but they SHOULD BE), a band 5 should be on at least £25,000 starting out for the level of education, qualification, skill and accountability we have for crying out loud! And it certainly should be recognised more widely what a staff Nurse does and that we CAN reach consultant level! Maybe then we will get the status, pay and respect we deserve!
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Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 11:24 pm
Things like this that encourage the "too posh to wash" attuide that is infiltrating nursing
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mike | 14-Aug-2010 8:00 am
Anonymous | 13-Aug-2010 11:24 pm please do no perpetuate that pathetic and ridiculous saying. Go and have a word with yourself.
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Latterlife Midwife | 14-Aug-2010 4:58 pm
Good grief, this was a *study* to assess the current state of awareness among young people of what is actually possible in nursing today, NOT a recruitment poster promising them they would achieve £100K/year!

I wish nurses cared enough about our profession to really comprehend the scope of the problem. This just touches the tip of the iceberg, but if it helps convince Nursing Times readers that the public has very little idea of what nursing can and should be, then good work. However, the usual nay-sayers jumped in and focussed on what caught their attention first, and not the crux of the matter - promoting the fact that nursing opportunities are only limited by what the individual nurse desires and how much drive they carry to get them there.

Where do average 18 year old kids get their knowledge of what nurses do, if not from the media, people? And they then grow into adults who don't know either, except when they become, or visit, patients...then their expectations come up against what they observe in those individual moments, and that cements what they believe, but may not actually know, about nursing.

Nurses must be advocates of our profession, not down-graders of it. Honestly, reading Nursing Times letters shows how many nurses are our own worst enemies. The media is the number one source of teenagers' knowledge of nursing; believe it! Where else would it come from, other than their parent's own misconceptions?

I don't know if the media is even discussed in the study, but as Professor Rafferty says, "We need to challenge and update the image of nursing to tell it as it is - one of the greatest and most rewarding professions providing one of the most precious services to society - compassionate, high-calibre care delivered by outstanding people.”

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mike | 14-Aug-2010 7:25 pm
Exactly latterlife!!! Finally! Nursing is in absolute trouble at the moment, and people on the whole really do not seem to care about it! Just lok at how few people debated on the threads about striking compared to the more nonnsical articles??!!!! I couldn't believe it! I too wish more people were passionate enough to fight for the profession and scream from the rafters when it comes to promoting us in a positive and realistic light! Yes there are negative aspects of the profession that need debating and arguing about, but Nurses need to start shouting about the positives too! The public need to realise exactly what the profession is and what we do as well!
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Anonymous | 14-Aug-2010 8:16 pm
Hear hear! Atlast a positive spark....just as I thought we'd all lost our sense of self worth. Nursing is an incredibly rewarding profession, one which should attract the brightest and most emotionally connected people in our society. We do need to define nursing to the youngsters so that they can aspire to become members of one of the oldest and most challenging professions. After completing my first degree, I appreciated just how challenging nursing is and that, without the body of knowledge and reflective skills acquired by undertaking the degree, my clinical skills and bed side care would not have advanced so comprehensively. We are the role models for future nurses...let's present a united front by advertising what creative and intellectual work underpins good nursing and the potential rewards, both monetary and through job satisfaction, which can be achieved.
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mike | 15-Aug-2010 8:11 am
Well said Anonymous | 14-Aug-2010 8:16 pm.

Anonymous | 14-, Aug-2010 10:31 pm I agree with you totally, but I think that is mainly because Nurses are so unwilling to fight for the profession as I have said; part of the problem is nonexistent moral, and part of THAT problem is the percieved image of Nursing in the public eye. Yes we do not get the pay, status or recognition we deserve as a profession, but that is something we can keep fighting for as long as Nurses get off their arses to do so. But what we have to keep in mind, and what the public HAS to realise, is that Nursing now is a highly educated (to degree level and beyond, there are Doctorates of Nursing for crying out loud), highly skilled, highly professional medical and caring profession, and we perform a wide range of clinical, medical and caring tasks, far more so than people realise.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2010 8:47 am
Another Consultant Nurse here - not earning anyway near £100K!

We should be promoting the real values and benefits of nursing to attract the right people. Unfortunately the generally eosteric benefits don't have the same snappiness for a strap-line in a job advert as "Earn up to £100K!"
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Ann Graham | 15-Aug-2010 11:02 am
There is a problem in nursing today and I feel it was highlighted by the point in this article '20% of the students who were studying different academic subjects said the were more likely to swap'

There are more people taking up nursing as a well paid career rather than a job that they have a real interst in or a real passion for doing.

It is a job you want to do, first impressions for the pateints are paramount. They want someone who wants to be there and give their best, not someone who is there because it is a well paid job in relation to other careers for 20 year olds.
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mike | 15-Aug-2010 12:00 pm
Ann, I see your point,, but how many Doctors go into that career solely for the status and pay? Are they any worse for that?

Whilst I think that the majority of us got into Nursing out of a genuine desire to help and care for people, what some people call the 'right' reasons, that does not mean that the profession shouldn't be well paid. The two are not mutually exclusive, you can have both together.

Just because a career is well paid, does not mean that you will not attract the 'right' people for the job, of course they will still come regardless of the pay, just as some will not be cut out for Nursing no matter how well paid it is.

But the crux of the matter is this, Nursing is a profession that is woefully underpaid and underated, and this should be rectified. It is also a profession that is underestimated with a majority of the public not having a clue what we actually do. This needs sorting too.
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Anonymous | 15-Aug-2010 8:39 pm
I agree with a lot of the comments above. Most people do not know what nursing involves. There are people (and I've met them) who believe nursing to be a working class job. I know of a florist who thinks she gets paid more than staff nurses despite only earning barely over minimum wage! So never mind the 18 year olds who don't know what nursing involves. I wouldn't mind being paid £35k right now never mind £100k.
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mike | 16-Aug-2010 4:40 pm
Anonymous | 15-Aug-2010 8:39 pm, I have also met people who not only believe it to be a working class job, but also as a second class option to being a Doctor (I have actually been asked, did I not want to be a Doctor, or did I not get the grades for medical school, which I found highly insulting!) They show no comprehension that they are two seperate (albeit intertwining) professions!

To be fair on the florist though, many jobs that do not require the education/skill/etc that ours does do earn as much if not more than we do! I site Binmen as a prime example! And that is woefully wrong!

We need to start demanding at least £25,000 for a newly qualified!
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