NHS to record harms created by striking doctors
STRIKING doctors are being warned that the NHS will start formally collecting evidence of the harm to patients caused by their refusal to help struggling hospitals.
Under strike protocols, hospital trusts can ask unions to allow doctors to cross picket lines and cover shifts if patient safety is compromised. But all known requests relating to the current action have so far been rejected by the British Medical Association (BMA).
Yesterday, senior officials at NHS England wrote to the BMA – setting out steps to strengthen safety protocols and log evidence of all harm occurring when such requests are rejected.
It came as hospitals across the country came under strain, with critical incidents and black alerts declared in almost every part of the country, and A&E units repeating warnings that they could only handle “life-threatening” cases.
Several hospitals issued public statements urging the public to take relatives home as soon as safely possible, in order to free up beds.
In the letter, Prof Sir Stephen Powis, NHS medical director, said health officials will follow up every case where mitigations have been rejected, in order to compile a picture of the impact on services.
Hospitals have been told to specifically record all safety incidents during strikes “so that we can evidence harm and near misses which might have been avoided”.
Prof Powis was responding to a letter from the BMA, in which the union claimed hospital medical directors and NHS officials were bowing to “political pressures” to undermine the strikes, without evidence to justify their appeals.
Yesterday the Prime Minister said he backed the clinical decisions being made by NHS leaders, adding that strikes were causing “an enormous amount of concern”.
Victoria Atkins, the Health Secretary, yesterday said the NHS does not “just belong to the BMA” adding: “It is absolutely for NHS leaders to decide which services need to be protected, I trust their medical judgment, their clinical judgment with these mitigations that they’re seeking.”
In a visit to London Ambulance Service, she said she would return to negotiations with the BMA as soon as the union called off the strikes.
Asked whether she hoped to resume pay talks with the BMA when the current strike is over, Ms Atkins said: “I’ve said throughout this that, please, to the junior doctors’ committee, the moment you call off the strikes, I’ll get back around the table with you within 20 minutes.
“It’s just we have to have the strikes called off, because the NHS belongs to us all. It doesn’t just belong to the junior doctors’ committee, and for the 1.3 million people who work in the NHS, as
‘The moment you call off the strikes, I’ll get back around the table with you within 20 minutes’
well of course for the tens of millions of people it looks after, the NHS cannot be switched on and off on whim.”
The comments came after Dr Rob Laurenson, the co-chairman of the BMA’S junior doctors committee, declared that “the NHS hates doctors” accusing NHS leaders of “closing ranks with the government to throw doctors under the bus”.
Pay talks between the BMA’S junior doctors committee and the Government broke down following a new offer averaging 3 per cent towards the end of last year, on top of a pay award of 8.8 per cent last summer. The BMA has asked for a 35 per cent increase.
NHS trusts yesterday urged the public to help free up hospital beds, by helping to get patients off the wards a quickly as possible.
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust asked family members to “collect relatives who are ready to go home to free up beds for those needing emergency care”.
Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Collecting family and friends from hospital as soon as they’re ready to be discharged helps to free up beds for those who need them. “Please do what you can to help bring them home” with similar appeals from South Warwickshire University NHS Trust.