NHS ‘at a standstill’ as consultants set to strike for 2 days
Routine care within the NHS might be “virtually at a standstill” because it faces one other two days of strikes.
Consultant docs and hospital-based dentists will walk out for 48 hours from 7am on Thursday till 7am on Saturday.
It follows 5 days of strikes by junior docs lasting from final Thursday to Tuesday morning – the longest interval of commercial motion in NHS historical past.
Other clinicians can not present cowl for consultants and any deliberate care delivered by junior docs or different healthcare professionals that requires even distant marketing consultant supervision will must be rescheduled.
This means a “significant amount” of deliberate care involving junior docs might be affected this week, NHS England stated.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis warned of the mass disruption anticipated throughout the NHS as consultants transfer to offer simply emergency cowl.
He stated the strikes might have “the most severe impact… with routine care virtually at a standstill for 48 hours”.
“Consultants will not only stop seeing patients themselves, but they won’t be around to provide supervision over the work of junior doctors, which impacts thousands of appointments for patients,” he stated.
“It additionally follows on very carefully from the longest-ever junior docs’ strike, which itself affected 1000’s of appointments, with back-to-back motion leaving NHS companies with virtually no time to get well.
“We are working closely with the British Medical Association and British Dental Association to ensure that emergency and urgent care is prioritised and patients remain safe, but in the eighth month of industrial action, and with more than 600,000 appointments already affected, it’s becoming even more challenging to get services back on track after each round of action,” Sir Stephen added.
Matthew Taylor, chief govt of the NHS Confederation, stated: “Leaders anticipate critical disruption over the approaching days regardless of their diligent efforts to arrange.
Junior docs chanted and sung concerning the well being secretary as they kicked off their 72-hour walkout.
“A consultants’ strike is something of an unknown quantity and while there are plans in place for Christmas Day levels of cover in emergency care, the patience of patients may be tested as wider services are reduced and operations postponed.
“This, in essence, is 2 Christmas Days again to again and follows a working week’s price of walkouts from different workers, so it is very a lot a step into the unknown.”
The authorities introduced pay will increase for hundreds of thousands of public sector staff, together with docs, final week.
It stated most eligible dentists and docs will obtain no less than a 6% pay rise, whereas hospital consultants will obtain a 6% rise.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak stated the deal was the “final offer” and that there might be “no more talks on pay”.
But the BMA stated the rise was a “savage real-terms pay cut” and known as it “derisory”.
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After the federal government announcement, hospital consultants stated they’ll strike for 2 extra days on 24 and 25 August.
Speaking about this week’s strike, Dr Vishal Sharma, chairman of the BMA consultants committee, stated: “The responsibility for this industrial action lies squarely at the door of the government. It still does not need to go ahead.
“It is with a heavy coronary heart that consultants have backed this strike, however we’re doing so exactly as a result of we care so deeply about sufferers and the NHS, which is at present failing to ship the standard of care that sufferers deserve on non-strike days.
“The government must be challenged on whether they hold care for patients in the same high regard, given they are currently refusing to support and take steps to retain the expert clinicians responsible for giving people the care they need.”