Nurses on a picket line broke away to run to the aid of a man who had collapsed outside a hospital. They were striking outside the Bristol Royal Infirmary on Thursday morning when the drama unfolded.
NHS services are facing significant disruption as nurses across England and Wales strike today. Unionised nursing staff from the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) have walked out in a row over pay after nurses in Wales voted for industrial action in November for the first time in history.
Nurses in all but one health board in Wales will be striking on Thursday with a second strike day planned for December 20.
Many of their colleagues in England are striking too, but the nurses in Bristol left the picket line to provide emergency first aid for the man who had fallen near the hospital doors. The patient was put into the recovery position and was visibly shaking on the ground outside – as temperatures dropped as low as -8C.
Within ten minutes staff working at the hospital came out to collect the patient, putting him on a spinal board and lifting him onto a stretcher. The striking nurses returned to the picket line shortly afterwards.
Talking about the strikes Paula Byrne, 58, a nurse specialist, told BristolLive: ''I’ve been a nurse for 40 years next year and I have real concerns, among myself and my colleagues, about the future of nursing. 'Daily we’re seeing nurses working under great stress with great challenge, and contributing an enormous amount of charity and good will, to maintain patient care so that’s a real concern for me.
''You’re seeing burnouts, you’re seeing thousands of nurse leaving the profession. 'What we have seen over the last ten years is austerity, austerity measures, public sector pay cuts, rising costs and we find that nurses now their daily living and quality of living has gone downhill.
''The staffing in the NHS is the most valuable asset is has – so if you don’t protect that assess, we’re not going to have a future in healthcare because there won’t be any nurses. This isn’t about making things difficult for patients, though we do appreciate that there’s going to be some suffering involved. 'Unfortunately that’s where we’re at to hopefully bring about some change.''
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