Strikes now endangering heart and cancer patients, NHSE warns BMA

The impact of successive doctors’ strikes is now ‘causing significant disruption and risk to patients’, including to those needing urgent heart and cancer treatment, NHS England leaders have told the BMA in their strongest warnings yet.

A letter to the union’s council chair on Tuesday evening, leaked to HSJ, said: “We are increasingly concerned that the cumulative impact of this action is causing significant disruption and risk to patients…

“We are extremely concerned that Christmas Day cover is insufficient to ensure appropriate levels of patient safety are being maintained across local health systems. This is particularly the case in the current period of industrial action, with three consecutive Christmas Day levels of service.”

Although Christmas Day includes cover for emergency care, the officials said that in practice – with demand above Christmas Day levels, and with successive days and repeated strikes – it was not protecting patients needing urgent care.

The letter, signed by NHSE leaders including chief medical officer Sir Steve Powis, and chief nurse Dame Ruth May, goes on: “Secondly, we are becoming increasingly concerned that combined periods of industrial action are impacting on our ability to manage individuals who require time-sensitive urgent treatment, for example cardiac, cancer or cardiovascular patients, or women needing urgent caesarean sections.”

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Source: HSJ, 3 October 2023