The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) will be taking strike action at Bradford Teaching Hospitals from 8pm on Sunday, 30 April to 23:59pm on Monday, 1 May. This will significantly impact services at our hospitals.
During strike action, urgent and emergency treatment will be our priority. We strongly urge people to continue to help us during this time by only coming to A&E with a genuine life or limb-threatening emergency, so we can care for our sickest patients.
If you do come with a non-urgent problem you will wait a long time for assessment and we may not be able to provide treatment. It will be quicker visiting www.111.nhs.uk, calling 111 or contacting your local GP or pharmacist.
Chief Nurse at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Karen Dawber, said:
The RCN strike action will severely reduce the number of nurses, healthcare assistants and other colleagues from the nursing profession we have in our hospitals.
This means that some operations and outpatient appointments will have to be cancelled and subsequently rescheduled. We know this is frustrating and we apologise to patients and families who will be affected.
If we do not contact you, please attend your appointment as planned. We will contact you if your appointment needs to be rescheduled or switched to a phone/online appointment.
It is really important that patients who need urgent medical care continue to come forward as normal, especially in emergency and life-threatening cases – when someone is seriously ill or injured, or their life is at risk. On days where there is strike action, patients should only call 999 if it is a medical or mental health emergency (when someone is seriously ill or injured and their life is at risk).
Karen Dawber added:
Patient safety is always our priority and our patients will be kept safe and receive the care they need from us during the strike action.
During this period we are relaxing our visiting rules to allow up to two visitors per patient at any time – more details are available from the wards.
The dispute over pay is between the RCN and the government, not our trusts. We value our colleagues and want to see a resolution to this national dispute as soon as possible.
GP appointments will not be impacted by this action, so if people require these services they can access these in the usual way. Access to mental health hospital and community services at Bradford District Care NHS Foundation Trust are unaffected and will remain open as normal.