Letter: Pay in the NHS

Sir: The new grade of highly-paid nurses (" `Supernurses' to help rescue NHS", 8 September) will not solve the inherent problem in the recruitment and retention of nurses within the NHS. The new consultant nurse grade will benefit a small but deserving few.

Like all government policy compromises driven by financial constraints rather than principle, the underlying problem has not been solved. Nurses have always been underpaid as all governments have been able to exploit the vocational dedication of the profession.

It is a cruel compromise to create the impression that all nurses will be rewarded in time with promotion to a reasonable consultant nurse salary. By not recognising openly that the whole profession is underpaid, the Government has decided that it cannot face the issue. A fair approach would be a meaningful pay increase across all grades.

RICHARD QUINIAN (RGN)

London SW9

Sir: I hope you are not about to start presenting the doctors' bid for a 10 per cent rise in salary (report, 10 September) as greedy, because I think you would do better to help readers, some of whom may be considering medicine as a profession, to consider the facts.

If someone is able to gain the qualifications required to become a Doctor of Medicine they could probably be good at just about anything. If we need doctors then the reward has to be worth the effort and risk, and currently it is not.

Should any well qualified student consider medicine as an option?

Would anyone willingly study for six years rather than three and end up with double the debt of other graduates?

Would anyone be happy with half-pay for compulsory overtime which, although it is called being "on call", actually means working most of a night as well as the day before and the day after?

Would anyone be happy embarking on a lengthy, paid apprenticeship during which they will frequently be making life-and-death decisions on their own?

Recent statistics indicate that 25 per cent of doctors who make it to registration leave by the end of the second year as registered practitioners.

MPs voted themselves a 26 per cent pay rise before the last election. These MPs sustain the government that, whether Conservative or Labour, penalises those groups who are too conscientious to strike. What young person, judging which profession to take up, could possibly put their future security in the Government as an employer?

J HOADLEY

Eastbourne, East Sussex