‘Is it really worth it?’: NHS nurses say job they love is exacting too high a price
When Chukwudubem Ifeajuna received an email from his son’s teacher, warmly praising his performance, his instinct as a proud father was to reward the youngster with a treat.
But Ifeajuna, who leads a community nursing team in Surrey, in the London commuter belt, swiftly re-evaluated, realising he could not afford even this minor act of largesse.
“He will have to make do with a ‘golden handshake’ and a little pat on the back,” said Ifeajuna, smiling, who said his three boys, aged between nine and 12, understand the financial constraints under which the family lives.
In August, she took the difficult decision to opt out of her pension as the only way to avoid going into her overdraft each month. She fulminates about the government’s inability to understand that “investing in nurses is a real no brainer” if the aim is to boost growth.
A large proportion of the economically inactive — unemployed people who are not currently looking for work — cite illness as the reason. “If we were to . . . get the staffing up, we would be getting through that backlog. We’d probably be returning people back into the economy,” she said.
For Khamfula, the job she loves may be exacting too high a price. She said: “You reach a point where you’re thinking ‘OK, is it really worth it? . . . Because how long will I do this? And for how long are my children going to go through this?’”
This story originally appeared on: Financial Times - Author:Sarah Neville
