Nurses strike amid health care crisis

LONDON — Medical appointments were canceled, hospital units shut down and some ambulance responses were delayed in Northern Ireland on Wednesday, when thousands of nurses staged short strikes in a longrunning dispute over pay and patient safety.

About 9,000 nurses represented by the Royal College of Nursing, a labor union, left their jobs for 12 hours — the first walkout in the group’s 103year history. About 6,000 nurses belonging to Unison, a public employee union, joined the protest, and were planning to stay away for a full day.

The nurses are demanding that the governmentrun health care system raise their pay to equal their counterparts in the rest of the United Kingdom, and hire more nurses to address inadequate staffing.

Pat Cullen, director of the Royal College of Nursing, says there are 2,800 vacant nursing positions.

Northern Ireland’s health care services are on the brink of collapse because of chronic underfunding that has gone unresolved for years. While the health system across Britain is under strain, the problems in Northern Ireland are particularly acute because, for almost three years, there has not been a functioning government in Belfast to make policy decisions, including pay raises for the public sector workers.

Critical services like cancer care, mental health and emergency care are struggling to cope, while waiting lists have expanded to record levels. Currently, 30,000 people are waiting to see a senior physician and many people face yearslong waits for elective procedures like hip and knee replacements.