Student nurse slept in car to avoid high fuel costs

A student nurse has said he has slept in his car between work placement shifts to try to avoid the rising cost of fuel.

Jake Benjamin Smart is a mental health student nurse at Ulster University's Magee campus in Londonderry.

The third-year student is calling on the Department of Health to increase the travel allowance paid to students.

Health Minister Robin Swann announced an increase in payments for most health and social care workers last month.

In a statement, the Department of Health said they are reviewing the mileage rate to be paid to students for the next academic year, starting in September.

Speaking to BBC Radio Foyle, the third-year nursing student said that himself and many of his peers are struggling during the cost-of-living crisis.

"The price of living has gone up, the price of diesel and petrol has gone up, and we are living off £430 a month.

"Because it's a full-time course we are advised not to work around that.

"I know students, including myself at times, who have had to sleep in their car at the hospital grounds because they literally can't afford to travel home and travel back up to placement the next day."

Mr Smart said there is "a lot of strain financially" on student nurses at the moment, and said the situation is not sustainable.

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"I'm working seven days a week and doing maybe 40 hours a week as a student nurse and pulling extra shifts to make sure that my rent is paid and the children have food.

"Yes, we have the luxury of having our course being funded, not everybody has that, but because it's funded we're only entitled to a bursary, we're not entitled to a student loan, or a maintenance loan."

Mr Smart said students are limited as to how much they can claim on mileage depending on the distance they are from the university.

"So say you lived 20 miles away from the university and your placement is 60 miles away, you can only claim for the 40 miles because you would be doing that 20-mile journey to the university anyway."

Director of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Northern Ireland, Rita Devlin, said she is "very concerned" many student nurses may be pushed out of training because they cannot afford to live during the cost-of-living crisis.

"The student bursary has not moved or changed in the past 10 years - that is £430 per month for students.

"That bursary is supposed to give them the ability to keep themselves going while they work."

She added: "A student nurse works 50% of the time in student placements and we are really concerned because the cost-of-living crisis is hitting our students very significantly.

"It is 24.4p per mile that the students are allowed to claim on mileage, so if you think that petrol and diesel prices are up to almost £2 per litre that doesn't go far at all."

Ms Devlin has said the mileage allowance is "the cherry on top of the awful cake" and has called for an overall increase to the bursary allowance.

"We can't afford to lose one single student nurse because we are very reliant on them coming in to help fill the huge vacancies in our health service," Ms Devlin said.

She said she will be raising the issue of student poverty urgently with Health Minister Robin Swann.

In a statement, the Department of Health said nursing and midwifery students on training places, commissioned by the department, can claim for excess travel to placements through the bursary office of the Business Service Organisation (BSO).

The department said the process "has been in operation successfully for years".

They added that when a claim is received by the bursary office it is paid to student the following month.