nurses and midwives in uk

Sixty-one-year-old nurse Karen Reissmann is hammered with a £10,000 fine, despite taking all precautions to ensure her protest was COVID-safe.

Karen and 40 colleagues were protesting in St Peter’s Square, Manchester, against the government’s one per cent pay rise for NHS workers.

She has worked as a frontline nurse throughout the pandemic, and was handed the fine in March despite offering a risk assessment of her protest to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and ensuring it was COVID-safe. She had limited the number of protesters to guarantee social distancing.

GMP assistant chief constable, Nick Bailey, said the force’s lawyers had reviewed the £10,000 (A$18,000) fine and were “satisfied that the issue was proportionate, legal, accountable and necessary in the circumstances”.

Karen, who has been a nurse for 39 years, told The Guardian: “Somebody calculated that if I used my one per cent pay rise, it would take me 56 years to pay off the fine.”

Karen said she believed the force’s desire to prosecute was meant to intimidate other nurses from organising protests.

“It’s so punitive; clearly designed to stop others. I know people who stepped back from protesting because they were afraid of the £10,000 fine,” she said.

England’s chief medical officer warns that COVID second wave could overwhelm the NHS.

The NHS has abandoned the 1:1 rule in intensive care as the number of very sick COVID patients soars in England’s hospitals.

Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, told the British Medical Journal that the combination of COVID and usual cold season surge in illnesses will bring “an extremely difficult winter for the NHS – one that I suspect, unfortunately, will be unlike any we’ve seen in recent memory”.

The NHS-wide lack of critical care nurses was a key factor in the decision to increase the ratio in ICUs to 1:2, Dr Alison Pittard, dean of the faculty of Intensive Care told The Guardian.

“The [revised] guidance is needed because we do not have enough critical care staff to support the increase in beds required to care for all the patients with COVID and those with other conditions needing admission,” she said.

“The main issue is the longstanding failure to expand the workforce, and that is doctors, nurses and allied health professionals.”

Susan Masters, the Royal College of Nursing’s director of nursing, policy and public affairs, said: “Reducing the ratio of nurses-to-patients must be a temporary measure and only when it is absolutely necessary.

“This change means increasing the workload of intensive care nurses and there must be consideration of the physical and emotional toll this will take.”

British nurse fined £10,000 for 1 per cent pay protest

NHS suspends 1:1 ICU rule as COVID admissions soar