NICE confirms that one in five nurses are on the wrong side of the pay gap
The NHS has confirmed that one out of five nurses is on the “wrong side of” the pay divide.
The National Audit Office’s annual health performance review (HPS) found the average pay gap was a whopping £11,000, with the biggest gaps seen in senior nursing roles, in the field of general practice and in the health service’s primary care sector.
In general practice, the pay difference was around £9,000.
The average gap in the NHS’s general practice sector was £5,000 and the gap for primary care was £4,500.
In all, there were 1.5 million nurses and midwives in the UK.
This included 5 million in the private sector.
HPS head Dr Simon Walker said the findings were “an important milestone” and were “in line with the HPS’s long-standing policy of providing a range of evidence-based approaches to managing pay inequality”.
“There is an urgent need for our workforce to have more confidence in their ability to manage and address pay inequality, and it is a matter of urgency that the NHS has taken action,” he said.
Dr Walker said there had been a “marked increase in the number of nurse vacancies over the past two years”, with an average of 12,000 nurses being posted to NHS areas over the last year.
“We’ve seen a dramatic increase in recruitment and turnover in this sector over the years, with a significant number of nurses joining as part of the workforce and leaving,” he told news.com.au.
“NHS leaders have been working to improve the overall health performance of the NHS and are determined to ensure that the pay equality gap is addressed in all areas of the health care system.”
What the research says The NHS report found there were 3.6 million nurse vacancies across the UK over the period April-June, with more than 10 per cent of those vacancies being in primary care.
The report also found that there were almost 1 million nursing vacancies in the healthcare sector across the country, which was around 10 per the figure for general practice.
Dr David Jones, from the National Centre for Nursing and Midwifery Research, said the HES report was “an encouraging report” that was based on “a large number of data sets”.
“These are very high figures, but we’re not seeing the pay gaps that we see in other sectors of the healthcare industry, which is one of the reasons why we need to see a lot more data from the NHS,” he added.
He said there was a lot of uncertainty about the role of the private healthcare sector in the workforce, which the report did not address. “
That is higher than in other areas of healthcare, which are only around 2.5pc of the overall workforce.”
He said there was a lot of uncertainty about the role of the private healthcare sector in the workforce, which the report did not address.
“It is hard to see how a large portion of the nurses in the public sector would be in the same position as they are in the care sector,” Dr Jones said.
“There are also a lot fewer nursing vacancies for primary health care in other healthcare sectors, with primary care staffing levels around a third lower than in the general practice sectors.”
Dr Jones pointed out that while nurses are being encouraged to work more part-time, the HBS study also found the number was still much higher in the nurse workforce than in general practice as well as in primary and secondary health care.
He said that the fact that the number is still higher than it was in the rest of the population should be considered in any discussions about the pay inequality problem.
“Given that there is a large proportion of the public workforce being recruited in part-timers, that should be a factor of concern,” he explained.
“This shows the importance of encouraging full-time nursing in this workforce.”
What you need to know about pay equality The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recently published an annual report on pay inequality.
The latest figures from the institute show that nurses have the highest median pay for a single position of $72,700.
That is higher even than that of doctors, where median pay was $67,700, and higher than for midwives, where it was $65,300.
The NICE report said that “the median salary of all nurses is $82,500” but that median pay only included salaries for the position that year.
The median pay of a midwife is $70,500, and the median pay is only for the role that year, while the median salary for a nurse is $68,500 and the lowest pay is for a general practitioner, where a midwifemaker makes $62,000 a year.
NICE chief executive Dr Julie O’Donovan said the report highlighted the “significant and growing need for better pay for nurses”. She said
The NHS has confirmed that one out of five nurses is on the “wrong side of” the pay divide.The National…
