Nurses hold Largest strike in NHS history: The greatest action of its sort in NHS history will take place today as nurses in Northern Ireland join their counterparts in England and Wales for a 12-hour walkout.
Staff will still offer emergency and urgent care, however, scheduled surgery will be interrupted starting at 8:00.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) is required to maintain life-sustaining care during the strike in accordance with trade union legislation.
Services, including non-emergency care, would be impacted, according to trusts.
Community nursing visits and outpatient appointments have been canceled. On non-urgent wards, there will also be fewer nurses available.
Northern Irish nurses have protested on the picket line twice in the last three years to demand safe staffing and fair pay. In what is thought to be the largest industrial action in the history of the NHS, nurses from all over England and Wales have joined them this time.
Denise Kelly, a 30-year veteran nurse, said that despite the inconvenience for patients, she thought that the people supported nurses in her speech from outside Antrim Area Hospital.
The health secretary is raising concerns about today’s cancellation of patient appointments, although nurses did not establish the waiting lists or the demands.
“We’re here to stand up for [patients] and fight for them, too,”
Nearly 500,000 nurses in the UK are represented by the RCN, a trade union, which said that it is pushing for a salary increase of 5% above the RPI inflation rate to offset real-terms pay cuts that, according to the organization, have made nurses 20% worse off since 2010.
The Department of Health stated in a statement that the strike will unavoidably worsen already-fragile services and that there are no quick fixes to the salary conflict.
The nurses’ strike comes three days after a 24-hour walkout by health sector employees from three of Northern Ireland’s largest unions over pay and working conditions.
Why is the strike happening?
The union is requesting a wage increase of 19.2%, according to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), but ministers claim that this is unaffordable.
The strike is the result of broken salary negotiations between Pat Cullen, the RCN president, and Health Secretary Steve Barclay.
According to Ms. Cullen, the health secretary refused to bring up wages during their discussion on Monday, thus the planned strikes for December 15 and 20 will go forward as scheduled.
According to a spokeswoman, the health secretary informed Ms. Cullen that any additional salary increases would require cutting funds from front-line services and the backlog following the implementation of COVID.
Ms. Cullen expressed her “great disappointment” at the confrontational behavior he displayed during the meeting.
According to the RCN, nurses’ incomes have been reduced for years because they were unable to keep up with the rising cost of living.
The chief nursing officers of England, Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland wrote to the trade union on Wednesday, shocking and devasting RCN members, they claimed.
The RCN had betrayed them, according to the letter to Ms. Cullen, and the strike might have an effect on services like end-of-life care and mental health.
Nurse in the Southern Trust and RCN spokeswoman Maureen Dolan said nurses expected the chief nursing officers to support them.
She said on BBC Radio Ulster’s Evening Extra show, “To think that they believe we’re putting our patients at risk when the aim of the strike is to ensure our patients aren’t at risk due to insufficient staffing.”
We are here to fight for our Patients
From the picket line outside Antrim Area Hospital, nurse Denise Kelly, who also serves as the national chair of the RCN trade union committee, spoke to the BBC’s Good Morning Ulster program.
The NHS cannot recruit enough staff into nursing with its existing offer. She said, therefore the action was not just about wages but also about patient safety.
“We are under strain, and daily service compromises occur. We are aware that in the entire United Kingdom, Northern Ireland has the longest waiting lists “Added she. This is the reason we are here today; we want to take action.
How will services be affected?
The five health trusts in Northern Ireland have released information on how the strikes will impact services in each location.
Post Source: BBC
