Hospital consultants to strike following junior doctors' protest

Hospital consultants are set to go on strike just two days after the next industrial action by junior doctors.

Bosses at University Hospitals of North Midlands (UHNM) Trust, which runs Royal Stoke and Stafford’s County Hospital, are once again gearing up for walkouts this month by members of the British Medical Association (BMA), reports Kerry Ashdown.

Consultants have also faced a fall in take-home pay since 2008, the BMA has said. During their two-day industrial action full emergency cover is set to remain in place, but routine and elective services face cancellation.

UHNM board members heard at a meeting on Wednesday (05) that cover during previous strike dates has cost the trust around £1.2m so far.

Chief executive Tracy Bullock said: “Week commencing 12th June we saw the third junior doctor’s industrial action and while we are now well-rehearsed in our plans it is not without its impact on patient care.

“We did unfortunately have to postpone a number of outpatient appointments and elective operations to ensure we could continue to provide urgent and emergency treatment to those who needed it most. We have the longest strike action from 13th to 18th July, which takes us over a weekend period as well.

“On the back of that, our consultants will be undertaking strike action July 20 and 21. As always, we are planning in relation to both of those strikes.

“We are a well-oiled machine but we take nothing for granted. Each time it gets a bit harder to plan for the strikes.

“For the consultants’ strike they are expecting we will have the equivalent level of Christmas Day coverage. We will be asking our consultants if they plan to work and we expect some are likely to, particularly the surgeons.

“We are continuing to plan for that in terms of impact on elective and planned procedures and financial impact as well. Whilst we have well-rehearsed plans and to date we have managed these strikes safely, they are not without consequence.

“As with the previous strikes this action will very unfortunately lead to the cancellation of some elective and planned activity, again at a time when we already have patients who are waiting for too long for their procedures. My thanks go to all of our staff who worked differently and flexibly during this time and for their continued support for further strikes.”

The trust is not expecting to see the level of cancellations it experienced during previous strike action however, deputy chief operating officer Katy Thorpe told Wednesday’s meeting. “We are not necessarily booking into those dates to try and manage patients’ expectations better”, she said.

(Local Democracy Reporting Service)