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10
Jul
Operations could be cancelled, Harrogate hospital warns as strike looms
Scheduled perations and appointments could be cancelled if doctors at Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust go on strike.
Resident doctors in England – formerly known as junior doctors – this week voted in favour of six months of strike action in on ongoing pay dispute.
The medics will stage a walkout from 7am on July 25 to 7am on July 30.
The British Medical Association’s resident doctors’ committee is calling for a “credible pay offer" from the government, which, it says, would put an end to planned industrial action. But health secretary Wes Streeting told the committee's co-chairs the government “cannot go further on pay this year”.
The Stray Ferret asked the trust, which operates Harrogate District Hospital and Ripon Community Hospital, to ask if any of its resident doctors planned to strike and how this would impact appointments.
A trust spokesperson said it does not yet know if its resident doctors will take part in industrial action, but it was “preparing for this eventuality”.
The spokesperson added:
As with previous strike action, we have established a multi-professional strike planning team to develop plans to ensure essential services can be maintained on the strike days, and to minimise any impact on our services, staff and patients.
Should strike action occur, we will prioritise emergency care and keeping all our patients safe. This may result in changes to some of our outpatient and theatre services on the days of industrial action and we may have to cancel outpatient appointments and elective operations. Postponed appointments would be re-arranged as a priority.
Resident doctors took part in 11 rounds of strike action between 2023 and 2024.
Members of the BMA’s resident doctors' committee reached an agreement on pay after the Labour government was elected in 2024, with resident doctors voting to endorse the deal in September of that year.
But resident doctors re-entered formal dispute with the government on April 9, and, according to the BMA, a recommendation made in a report by the Review Body on Doctors’ and Dentists’ Renumeration to uplift doctors’ pay by 4% only “intensified their dissatisfaction".
Co-chairs of the committee, Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt, said Mr Streeting "needs to come forward as soon as possible with a credible path to pay restoration".
However, the health secretary told the committee he remains "disappointed" over the strike plans, adding members "will not find a health and social care secretary as sympathetic to resident doctors as me".
Mr Streeting's letter to the committee added:
While we cannot go further on pay this year, there is so much more we can do together to improve the lives of resident doctors and the wider NHS. In my time as health and social care secretary, we have made more progress in one year of working together on your concerns than has been made after a series of disputes.
Strikes now will see the BMA resident doctor committee turn its back on that open door. At a time when the NHS is finally moving in the right direction, strikes also put that recovery at risk. This affects patients.
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