The accident and emergency department at a hospital in the west of England is closed due to strike action by junior doctors.
Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust has announced that Cheltenham A&E has temporarily closed from now until 8am on Saturday 23 December and will do so again from 8pm on Monday 1 January until 8am on Tuesday 9 January. During that time, no minor injury and illness unit (MIIU) services will be provided either.
Junior Doctors’ Strikes
Junior doctors are taking industrial action in December and January after talks broke down between the BMA and the government. The BMA has said the walkouts will be part of the longest period of industrial action in the NHS’s history and are due to pay as well as work conditions.
BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said in a joint statement that the walkouts follow five weeks of “intense talks”.
“We have been clear from the outset of these talks that we needed to move at pace and if we did not have a credible offer, we would be forced to call strikes. “We can call this strike off today if the UK Government will simply follow the example of the government in Scotland and drop their nonsensical precondition of not talking whilst strikes are announced and produce an offer which is credible to the doctors they are speaking with.” the statement added.
Junior doctors in their first year as foundation doctors on the 2016 contract will receive £32,398, the BMA said. In their second year, their salary increases to £37,303. Junior doctors were offered a 3 per cent rise on top of the average 8.8 per cent increase they were already given in the summer. But the BMA said the cash would have been split unevenly across different doctor grades and would “still amount to pay cuts for many doctors”.
Health and social care secretary Victoria Atkins said the Government would “immediately look to come back to the table” if the junior doctors’ strikes were called off. “It is disappointing that, despite significant progress, the BMA junior doctors committee have walked away from negotiations and declared new strikes, which will result in more disruption for patients and extra pressure on NHS services and staff as we enter a busy winter period, risking patient safety. I have been clear that I respect the work of doctors in training and want to work with them to settle this dispute.” she said.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, added: “The worst fear of health leaders has come true. “The BMA has targeted some very challenging weeks for its next phase of junior doctor walkouts.”
Cheltenham General Hospital
Cheltenham General Hospital’s A&E unit will switch to an MIIU service only from 8am to 8pm on Saturday 23 December to (and including) Monday 1 January 2024. It will be closed overnight. Normally, Cheltenham A&E has a consultant-led Emergency Department from 8am-8pm and a nurse-led Minor Injuries and Illness Unit (MIIU) from 8pm – 8am.
Emergency care services (A&E) will be centralised at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital 24/7 throughout this period, the trust said. Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Trust said it was part of an “Industrial action update: December and January”, due to strikes planned by junior doctors.
“The latest round of strikes scheduled for December (3 days) and early January (6 days) will pose substantial challenges to hospital services at the busiest time of the year and the impact will be felt well into the New Year,” it said in a statement.
Curia’s NHS Innovation and Life Sciences Commission
Independent, cross-party, and not-for-profit, as a policy institute Curia turns policy into practice as the UK’s first “do tank”.
Jointly chaired by former Life Sciences and Innovation Minister, Lord James O’Shaughnessy and former Deputy Medical Director at NHS England Professor Mike Bewick, the NHS Innovation and Life Sciences Commission seeks to identify examples of good practice in innovation, draw learning and consider how implementation plans across the sector can improve the lives of patients. By bringing together key strands of policy and developing effective implementation strategies through extensive research, the Commission seeks to see change at every level within the NHS.
