How the NMC silences Nurses in the UK

A recent review into the culture of the Nursing and Midwifery (NMC) Council in the United Kingdom has termed the nursing regulator as toxic and racist. The report speaks about NMC employees who have committed suicide and others living on antidepressants thanks to the culture of bullying, harassment, and intimidation. A recent transcript from the House of Commons shows that NMC spends money to go after Whistleblowers. If I am reading this right, it translates into hurt me yes but come after me when I complain. This is structural narcissism.

This is the report that was published.

When I registered as a nurse in the United Kingdom, I was told by my seniors to protect my PIN. A PIN is a personal identification number, essentially a license to practise as a nurse. I was also told to join a union because losing that PIN without union representation is easy. I have passed that information to colleagues since then. The United Kingdom nursing regulator, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, makes it clear to nurses that they can lose their PINs anytime. It is however not true for all nurses in the UK. Nurses who come from black and other ethnic minority communities lose their PINs and get struck off the nursing register more than Caucasian nurses. I am not reporting gossip, this is from NMC’s internal review.

The recently released report on the culture of the NMC leadership and governance has shone a light on what nurses from ethnic minority groups have been saying for years. Black nurses for instance get referred to the NMC for the slightest mistake faster than Caucasian nurses. This has led to a blame culture within the nursing profession in the UK and a stifling of innovation. Nurses are afraid to speak their minds or even try new ways of doing things lest they get referred to the biased NMC and lose their Right to Practice.

Protecting the PIN is what every nurse across the UK knows. We fear the NMC more than we fear making honest mistakes at work.

The NMC every three years mandates nurses to revalidate their registration. The nurses have to undergo rigorous reflection on their practice in the preceding three years and write several accounts of how they have practised within the NMC Code of Conduct. Ironically, the same body that asks us to do this has been caught neck-deep in unethical practices of discrimination, gaslighting, racism, and toxic work culture.

Notably, this recent report is not the only one in recent years. The NMC is not without reviews of its internal structures. It was even debated in the House of Commons, see the link below. Yet for some reason, the NMC president wrote us an email to say how they have learned from this recent review and how they are committed to change. How committed are they when they recently hired a nurse who was accused of blatant racism and only let them go after a public uproar? Does the NMC take its own Code of Conduct seriously?

The NMC stifles nursing development from within. Instead of supporting nurses, they act like masters of unwilling servants. They are there not to support but to drive nurses out of the profession at the slightest provocation. As an overseas nurse, I feel that more than patient safety, what I care for most is ‘protecting my PIN’ and ‘covering my back.’ That is the language nurses in the NHS, private sector and social care know. We are always watching our backs. It feels like there is a weight that hangs on our shoulders every time we are at work. By the time we get home, we have to mentally check all the boxes that need protecting.

?My colleagues in New Zealand, Australia, and even the USA speak of ‘less pressure to protect my license’ and a feeling of ‘freedom to think,’ which I have to admit will be one of the reasons that will drive me out of the UK someday. I am not alone; several overseas nurses have double or triple registrations. We maintain registrations in other countries just in case the NMC wakes up and does not like what we have said or thought, or complained about. Just in case they wake up and decide they have had enough of us. Do we love the UK? Absolutely! But the blame game and the consistent chase after our PINs is not healthy for our mental health. Nursing should be safe not only for patients but for nurses as well. The regulator should protect, not fight her nurses.

?For years now we have decried the unsafe staffing standards in the NHS. The nursing regulator has been silent. The NMC has gone as far as allowing Trusts to replace nursing positions with Nursing Associates instead of providing a legal framework of what safe staffing should look like in law. This is a display of a master so high on their leather back chair and tone-deaf to the needs of their servants.

I have no confidence in the current NMC leadership and I believe thousands of nurses across the UK do not either. I do not buy the email they sent about change. I do not think anything will change. The UK as a country is great at producing world-class reports that gather dust on expensive shelves. The NMC is not different. They are sorry yes, but only because they got caught.