I have recently received a demand (i don't call it a request because of the confident even arrogant language in which it was written) from the Nursing and Midwifery Council [NMC] for my annual registration fees. £76 per annum. It's like being stopped at a pass by a grubby sweating and sunburned bandit, a gnawed cigar hanging from one side of his mouth, “'Ey – geev me yor money, gringo!!”
In what other job do you have to pay money up front in order just to work? This mimics the worst excesses of employers of illegal labour who force their workers to surrender their passports, and then make a weekly deduction from their wages for the dubious privilege of being employed by them because they wouldn't be able to work anywhere else.
And where does that money go? On furnishing the fat and flabby backsides of bureaucrats seated in the London office? One senior union official told me that they have represented so many nurses in disciplinary cases over the years that they are growing convinced that the continual hikes in registration fees are made in order to afford more and more expensive barristers hired by the NMC to persecute nurses.
And this “protecting the public” thing is ludicrous. It's a fashionable, catchy, trendy sound bite that sounds good but means the opposite: what about protecting nurses? What about protecting nurses from redundancies, pension cuts, longer working hours, short staffing, under-resourcing, crap training? Where's the political lobbying for better conditions for nurses?The NMC stays silent on these things. As well it might. For reasons of its own self-interest it wants to cosy up to the Department of Health, to be its friend, because that's where the power lies, and so long as they are mates the DH won't object about the NMC continuing to extort money from nurses.
How about the NMC protecting nurses from...the NMC?
So – what has the NMC ever done for nurses? The only good thing (well, there are two) that i can think of are both publications that relate to mentoring and were supported by the NMC, Burke and Suldhana's consultation document on a Standard to support learning and assessment in practice, and Kathleen Duffy's Failing Students.
And the Code of Professional Conduct is so wishy washy as to be almost useless. It sets out an ethical framework in which nurses must practice and that is fine, but who says that ethical framework is the right one? The NMC may consult on some things but since when did it consult on the bossy, white middle class values that form its ethical framework?
The NMC is very smug in its regulation of nurses. Isn't it time the NMC itself was regulated? Isn't it time that every registered nurse in the land withdrew their registration fees in protest? How about setting up a new regulatory authority? One like the Health Professions Council that is for all people working in health care? After all what's so special about nurses? Besides the fact that we have to pay in order to work?
