There's an escalating shortage of nurses — and it's effecting the quality of patient care.
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00:00Nursing is a job that demands a huge chunk of your soul on a daily basis and in order to do that, I think that nurses need to be better valued.
00:08I can think of no greater privilege than to hold the hand of a person at the frailest, most significant and extreme moments of their life, to be a nurse and to travel with them through that journey that they're going from.
00:38Nurse recruitment and retention is a global problem. In the UK we're 41,000 nurses short, in England alone and around the world other countries are facing a similar crisis.
00:56In America there are going to be a million nurses short by 2023 and that's the biggest shortage they've ever seen. So it really is something that affects every single one of us and we all need to be worried about the fact that people don't want to be nurses anymore.
01:11Nursing is a predominantly female profession. In the UK 89% of nurses are women and women are less valued in our society, very sadly. And also I think that patient population has been changing so much and the stresses on nurses have become so vast and so great.
01:33We're in a situation where we've got patients who are increasingly making demands on the NHS and yet the funding has got so tight that it's been a perfect storm really.
01:50But the NHS is still one of the greatest institutions in the world I believe and I feel very proud of the NHS. I feel very proud that we're a country that has a health service that's free at the point of entry. I'm very worried about Brexit as we all are here in the UK and about the number of nurses I've worked with from Europe who will be leaving and that is going to be a big problem for the NHS.
02:16But we are very proud of the NHS here and its people, its doctors and nurses do an absolutely incredible job day after day after day despite the pressures that they face.
02:27Nursing has taught me many lessons and I feel like as a society we're moving away from those values that we used to hold dear. So community and kindness don't seem to be the things that people are wanting to achieve with their life.
02:48I do worry that we're becoming obsessed with money and power and the cult of youth and celebrity and fame and all those things are pretty much the wrong values. I think that nursing teaches all of us what matters in the end and those things that matter to each and every one of us will be kindness and compassion and care.