NHS boss says hospitals will come ‘under immense strain’ when nurses go on strike tomorrow as Great Ormond Street warns sick children are at risk
- Nurses will walk out of A&E, intensive care and cancer wards for the first time
- Read more: NHS nurses’ strike for May 2 gets called off after High Court ruling
Hospitals will be ‘under immense strain’ when nurses go on strike tomorrow as hundreds of thousands of cancelled procedures are now starting to take their toll, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation has said.
Royal College of Nursing (RCN) officials had scheduled a 48-hour strike in England from 8pm on April 30 to 8pm on May 2 in an escalation of its ongoing pay row with ministers.
They have since been forced to call off action on the final day after being told it was ‘unlawful’ in a historic legal fight with the Government, which means the strike will only run until 11.59pm on May 1.
Discussing the knock-on effect of these strikes, Matthew Taylor of the NHS Confederation told BBC Breakfast: ‘We would always urge people to act wisely and not to risk their health and of course people always do have accidents.
‘I guess in the very margins, it is something that people have at the back of their minds which is that if you are in an area that is affected the health service is going to be under immense strain.’
Pat Cullen, General Secretary of the Royal College of Nurses, joins nurses and members of the RCN outside the High Court in London
Strike action planned by the RCN for May 2 has been called off after a High Court judge ruled it would be unlawful
Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, told BBC Breakfast that hospitals will be ‘under immense strain’ when nurses go on strike tomorrow
He added: ‘We are a health service that is always running on hot. If you take capacity out even for a day, then it has knock-on effects but this has been going on six months so those affects have piled up.
READ MORE: GMB accepts same pay deal that union behind the upcoming NHS walk-out rejected
‘There are are hundreds of thousands of cancelled operations and procedures and that is why it is so vital to have a resolution to this dispute.
‘If this industrial action were to roll on into the summer then it would make it almost impossible for us to meet the targets that we have, in backlog and other areas of patient care.
‘I talk to NHS leaders all the time and I have never known a period when leaders are so worried about staff moral and there is a sense of a loss of hope.
‘We have 120,000-plus of vacancies in the health service. We have been waiting for years for a proper funded workforce plan, so even when these strikes are over, we still have very serious issues of recruitment, retention and of motivation in our health and care system.’
Yesterday, Great Ormond Street Hospital bosses warned sick children will be at risk during the Bank Holiday strike.
In a desperate plea to protect ill kids being treated on the premises, chief executive Mat Shaw said: ‘We respect the right of our staff to take part in lawful industrial action. But, after exhausting all options, at the moment we have serious concerns over how we will safely staff our hospital during the strike.
‘There is nothing more important than the safety of our patients.
More than 500,000 NHS appointments and operations in England have been cancelled as a result of staff striking over pay
‘These children have no voice in the debate and we must protect them. We urgently need safety exemptions for our intensive care units and other areas of the hospital.’
In a new development the RCN did announce that it would be working with health leaders to provide some staff during its bank holiday strike.
Despite previously saying it will not agree to derogations, it said that ‘safety critical mitigations may be required for a period to maintain safe patient care’.
An RCN spokeswoman said: ‘There are no entire exemptions seen across the country.
‘But we are taking reasonable and clinically urgent mitigations to protect life and limb as everybody would expect.’
The strike also comes as members of the GMB voted to accept the Government’s pay offer to health workers.
The deal, which ministers have insisted is final, amounts to a one-off bonus for last year and an extra 5 per cent for the upcoming one.
Tens of thousands of the union’s health workers were balloted on the offer. Fifty-six per cent voted to accept, with a turn-out of just over half.
Saffron Cordery, the deputy head of NHS Providers, has also warned that NHS trusts across the country are ‘deeply concerned’ about how they will be able to manage during the nursing strikes.
Ms Cordery told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘We have indeed heard from trusts up and down the country about the fact that they are deeply concerned about this strike action.
‘I think it’s fair to say there are significant concerns about how trusts will manage this.’
Where will nurses strike on April 30?
The RCN has said the 48-hour, no exceptions walkout will be held at the following NHS workplaces in England.:
East Midlands
Derbyshire Community Health Services NHS Foundation Trust
Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust
Kettering General Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Derby and Derbyshire ICB
NHS Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB
Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Eastern
Cambridge University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough NHS Foundation Trust
Cambridgeshire Community Services NHS Trust
East Suffolk and North Essex NHS Foundation Trust
Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust
NHS Hertfordshire and West Essex ICB
NHS Mid and South Essex ICB
NHS Norfolk and Waveney ICB
NHS Suffolk and North East Essex ICB
Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
Norfolk Community Health and Care
NHS Trust Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust
London
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children NHS Foundation Trust
Guys and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust
Hounslow and Richmond Community Healthcare NHS Trust
Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Kings College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
NHS North Central London ICB
NHS South West London ICB
Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust
St George’s University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust
University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
North West
Alder Hey Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
Bridgewater Community Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Lancashire Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Liverpool Heart and Chest Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust
Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust
Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Cheshire and Merseyside ICB
NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria ICB
North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust
St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Tameside and Glossop Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust
The Christie NHS Foundation Trust
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre NHS Foundation Trust
The Walton Centre NHS Foundation Trust
Wirral Community Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust
Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Wrightington Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust
Northern
Country Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust
Gateshead NHS Foundation Trust
North of England Commissioning Support (NECS)
North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust
Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
The Newcastle Upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Foundation Trust
South East
East Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust
Kent Community Health NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Kent and Medway ICB
NHS Surrey Heartlands ICB
Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
South East Coast Ambulance Service
Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust
Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust
Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust
Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust
Solent NHS Trust
South Central Ambulance Services NHS Foundation Trust
Southern Health NHS Foundation Trust
University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust
South West
Avon and Wiltshire Mental Health Partnership NHS Trust
Cornwall Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
Devon Partnership NHS Trust
Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Dorset Healthcare University NHS Foundation Trust
Gloucestershire Health and Care NHS Foundation Trust
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Bath, North East Somerset, Swindon and Wiltshire ICB
NHS Devon ICB (One Devon)
NHS Dorset ICB (One Dorset)
NHS Gloucestershire ICB (One Gloucestershire)
North Bristol NHS Trust
Royal Cornwall Hospitals NHS Trust
Royal Devon University Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust
Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust
Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust
Somerset NHS Foundation Trust
South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust
Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust
University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust
University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust
West Midlands
Birmingham Women’s and Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
Dudley Integrated Health and Care NHS Trust
Herefordshire and Worcestershire Health and Care NHS Trust
Midlands and Lancashire CSU
Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust
NHS Birmingham and Solihull ICB (BSol ICB)
NHS Black Country ICB
Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust
The Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust
Yorkshire and the Humber
Barnsley Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust
Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust
NHS North West Yorkshire ICB
Sheffield Children’s NHS Foundation Trust
Sheffield Health and Social Care NHS Foundation Trust
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
The Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
York and Scarborough Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
National employers
Health Education England
NHS Blood and Transplant
NHS England NHS Resolution
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