News that an NHS nurse has broken the £100,000 salary barrier has been welcomed by the public.
Figures released under the Freedom of Information Act showed the unnamed nurse received a basic salary of £50,000, plus at least £50,000 in overtime payments, while dozens of nurses were earning more than £60,000 per year.
But messages of support flooded on to the newspaper’s website.
One said: “Having been a cardiac patient of the NHS I am very happy to pay doctors and nurses these kind of salaries. The work they do is far more valuable than any MP or civil servant.”
Sign up to our weekly round-up of HR news and guidance
Receive the Personnel Today Direct e-newsletter every Wednesday
Another added: “I think it’s great that there is some incentive to these highly trained individuals, who have to make considerable personal sacrifices to provide such a useful service. Perhaps if we treated our doctors and nurses better, we’d have a better functioning NHS, and more people would want this job.”
One consultant at the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust was paid between £225,000 and £229,000 in the last financial year. A consultant at Tameside Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, earned £228,000.