Hansard

I thank my friend Jackie Baillie for securing the debate, and I thank the Royal College of Nursing for its tireless work in representing its profession.

As Jackie Baillie said at the top of the debate, we celebrate international nurses day on the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth. She was a truly remarkable pioneer. However, her contemporary and fellow nurse Mary Seacole is not often talked about enough. She was born to a Jamaican mother and a Scottish father. She often talked affectionately about her Scottish heritage. Like Nightingale, she nursed her way throughout the Crimean war. However, unlike the lady of the lamp, she was shunned by the British Army. She instead established her own hospital, where she provided help to countless British soldiers. She was the only person to do so right on the front line. Determined to care for those who needed it, she said,

“I ask no greater or higher privilege than to minister to it.”

That sentiment encapsulates the heart and the character of nurses everywhere.

Seacole spoke openly about the racial discrimination that she faced, and, indeed, it is widely believed that such prejudice means that, even today, she does not get the recognition that she deserves. In a parallel sense, I want to note that it was disconcerting to read in the RCN workforce report the variation in the treatment and experiences of nurses depending on their ethnicity.

As has been made blisteringly clear time and time again, and as has been stated eloquently many times in this debate, we owe an enormous debt to our nurses, so why is it that that debt remains so poorly serviced? A record 9 per cent of registered nursing posts are still unfilled. That is having a devastating impact on workload and wellbeing. An astonishing 70 per cent of nurses feel undervalued and almost half feel unable to give patients the right level of care. One nurse practitioner admitted that they always enjoyed the job and found it rewarding but said that it now feels like

“we are sinking in quicksand with no way out.”

When Jackie Baillie and I attended a round-table event with nurses that was hosted by the RCN, we heard many such stories. It is appalling that that is the experience of a single nurse in this country, yet, as the report suggests, it is a commonplace one.

Despite that, nurses continue to go above and beyond in the face of the inordinate pressure that they come under. I was particularly struck by that given what nurses in my constituency experienced in January. Due to mismanagement—we have talked about this several times in this place—numerous nurses were unable to park at the Royal infirmary of Edinburgh. Nurses told me that they were sacrificing the little sleep that they get to wake up hours earlier than they usually do just to make it on time for their shift. That is one of countless stories that demonstrates the difficulties that nurses face being compounded by decisions made by management.

This Government is presiding over what will soon be, if we do not act fast, the disintegration of one of the most important workforces in our health service. There is so much more that the Government can do and should be doing. For example, it needs to set out a clear and urgent timetable for the safe staffing aspect of the Health and Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Act 2019 to be activated. The legislation has existed for three years, but it has still not been utilised properly. All the while, staff and patients are left unsafe on the shifts that they are asked to deliver.

Although the Government has pledged £12 million for staff wellbeing, we are yet to see a viable plan as to how such investment is being implemented into tangible and accessible support for staff. Instead, our proposal for a burnout prevention strategy has been routinely dismissed by the Cabinet. Meanwhile, more nurses are being pushed away from the job that they love and more patients risk losing out.

I will end on a quote from the ineffable Maya Angelou, who said:

“If you find it in your heart to care for somebody else, you will have succeeded.”

If that is the metric of success, nurses succeed tenfold every day and it is about time that we politicians started recognising that success with more than just words.