NHS boss says strike will put hospitals under 'immense strain'

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 

Source: Read Full Article