Today’s strike by nurses will affect emergency departments, intensive care and cancer care for the first time and cause “unavoidable disruption” to non-emergency services, a senior doctor has said. Despite the nurses’ union chairman’s insistence on the minimum standard of care, accidents continue to happen.
Dr. Win Diwakar Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, the National Medical Director of NHS England Transformation said:
Unfortunately, patients who need to go to the emergency room are still in the hospital, of course this happens all the time. But help can be delayed except in a life-threatening emergency.
If it is an emergency, it will be treated as usual. Therefore, we urge the public not to hesitate to call 999 or use the usual 111 for medical assistance. But at King’s College Health Care, even for those services where we have agreed to reduce measures, disruptions to regular services are inevitable. Guard
Regarding cancer treatment, Dr.
Pat Cullen, In an interview with ITV’s Good Morning Britain, the chief secretary of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said:
Our nurses continue to work today to protect our patients. And for the nurses who will lose their daily wages, if I have another emergency during this time, I will not even ask these nurses to go back to work, they will go back on their own. They do not turn their backs on the patient, they continue to do what they have to do.
Cullen added that the RCN had allowed some intensive care unit nurses to work during the strike, “although not all of them had asked to be free”.
