HALF of nurses in Scotland are living with a long-term illness and one in four admits that money problems during the past year have left them struggling to pay their household gas and electricity bills, according to study of the profession’s wellbeing.
The UK-wide survey of 2,200 nurses, midwives and healthcare assistants found that levels of ill health, anxiety, financial difficulties and domestic abuse were much higher than the general population.
The research by the Cavell Nurses’ Trust, which offers financial support, found that nurses in Scotland were most likely to be suffering with serious health problems of their own. Just under 50 per cent of nursing professionals in Scotland said they were living with a physical or mental illness which they “expect to last longer than a year”.
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More than one in 10 Scottish nurses rated their health as “bad or very bad”, with nearly one in five reporting that a disability or illness - including health problems related to old age - limited their daily activities “ a lot”.
Overall, anxiety levels among nursing staff was nearly twice as high as the general population and nursing professionals across the UK were three times more likely than the average person to have suffered domestic abuse during the past year.
In Scotland, nearly 13 per cent of respondents aged 20-24 said that their partner had prevented them from having a “fair share of the household money”, stopped them from seeing friends and relatives, and “repeatedly belittled” them to the extent that they “felt worthless”.
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Among the same age group, 2.5 per cent in Scotland said they had been “frightened or threatened” by a partner or ex-partner during the previous 12 months, with 2.5 per cent also saying that they had been physically harmed.
The National Centre for the Study and Prevention of Violence and Abuse (NCSPVA) said there was a potential link between those working in caring roles and their vulnerability to domestic abuse.
Claire Richards, of the NCSPVA, said: “Nurses may see their partner’s behaviour as part of a wider problem, such as depression, unemployment or a drink problem that they seek to treat or heal.”
Dame Christine Beasley, former chief nursing officer and Patron of Cavell Nurses’ Trust, said: “We already know that some frontline nurses face abuse from patients. To learn that some are also facing abuse in their personal lives is shocking.
“In addition many nurses whilst providing excellent care for their patients day in and day out are also facing worrying levels of ill health and financial difficulties.”
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In Scotland, a quarter of nursing professionals said that financial difficulties had left them struggling to pay their gas and electricity bills during the previous 12 months, while 16 per cent said they had skipped meals to save money.
More than one in three had borrowed money to help pay bill and 17.6 per cent had taken on an extra job, but half of the 125 nursing professionals surveyed in Scotland said they felt worse off now than five years ago.
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