I am in the wrong job.

Read any of my posts on this blog about long shifts-no breaks- no help- multitasking-being held responsible for someone's death simply because you cannot be at once 10 places=constantly shifting between 12 hour days and 12 hour nights in the same week yada yada yada. Abuse Abuse Abuse.

That's what followed three years of hell at university that made my siblings' teaching and media degrees look like child's play. They'll tell you. Nursing school is something like DOUBLE the material to learn. Then you have to do thousands of hours of placements on top of that.

And I make less than a nanny, teachers, policemen-hell even cleaning ladies charge more per hour than what I earn. Now I learned about another occupation that out earns registered nurses...A DOG GROOMER.

Some Dog groomers can make in an hour what I make during 8 hours at work. For real.

£30-50 pounds for one medium sized dog (not mine) to have it's hair all trimmed, nothing fancy. it takes an hour. How many can they do a day? And they get to focus on one doggie at a time. Other groomers are quoting more money apparently.

Okay I worked 2 unpaid hours at the end of my shift the other day. No choice. Does anyone think that a doggie barber will cut my dog's hair for free since I don't always get paid for the work that I do?

Didn't think so. I still have to pay the childminder to look after my child for hours I didn't actually get paid for so....

God, you should see the look on the childminder's face when I pick my kid up 15 minutes late. She charges a pound a minute for lateness. She gives me a bitter lecture about how unfair it is that she has had to work an extra 15 minutes past her finishing time. My god. She was only looking after one child and she got £15.00 for working 15 minutes late. Twice that same week I had to stay over 2 unpaid hours past the end of my shift because patients went bad and there were no staff (luckily I was able to call Mr. Militant Medical Nurse and he was able to ditch out of work early and get our son-happens all the time-never marry a staff nurse). Staying over like this happens after many many hours of work looking after many difficult people with no break. And god forbid if I don't have a big smile on my face throughout that-the visitors make a bee-line to PALS to officially complain about the nurses looking like sour faced bitches.

Anyway I fired this childminder, but the rest of them are no better. Do people in other jobs really get to leave work on time and get paid for it when they don't? Brats. The childminder can even control how many children she looks after at one time. You won't see her forced to take on 20 of them and then accused of neglect and not caring when she cannot give one to one attention.

Can you imagine if registered nurses billed in the same way that these people do? Can you imagine if I charged £5-6 an hour per patient. I can have anywhere from 10-30 patients for 12 hours.

We should all become independent contractors and charge the hospitals for our services. At least then we could control our workload. I would never contract myself out to take more than 4 -6 patients at a time, at a cost of £5 an hour each. I'll charge so little for the important service I provide because I am nice and also want to be competitive. If the hospital or patient doesn't like me, they can sack me and find another. But really, how could I fail. I could do a hell of a good job as a nurse if I limited my patient load to 4 at a time. £5 an hour to keep your gran alive and care for her needs as well as managing and providing her doctors treatment plan. Even if I only charge what a childminder does I'll still be better off. Who can complain about a registered nurse wanting to earn like a childminder? I guess a lot of people would because if we billed as these people do and also controlled our workloads so that we can do a good job it would probably bring the whole health service down.

Anyway it's never going to happen so I am off to google "how to become a dog groomer?"

I guess I have a bit of attitude today. I think this is the first time I have posted bitching about pay. I usually try to avoid that subject. I have one more negative post coming after this and then a really positive one.