Planned strikes next week will be “very challenging” for the health service, hospital bosses have warned, after they conceded that Thursday’s nurses strikes had had a “significant impact”.
The comments from NHS Providers came amid mounting pressure on the government from senior backbenchers and usually supportive newspapers to try to resolve the dispute.
The Royal College of Nursing is planning another strike next Tuesday, which will be followed on Wednesday by a strike by ambulance workers.
Hospitals have also been urged to free up as many beds as possible ahead of the action by ambulance crews, as NHS data on Thursday showed ambulance handover delays at A&E had hit a new high.
Saffron Cordery, the interim chief executive of NHS Providers, outlined the increased challenges the strikes would present to hospitals.
Speaking to the BBC Radio 4 Today programme, she said: “It’s going to get increasingly difficult for trust leaders to manage this process because we know that the winter is always a very tricky time in the NHS and we know it’s a particularly demanding time.
“Coming alongside an ambulance strike on the following day, I think it’s going to be a very challenging time next week.”
She also described the “very demanding” impact of Thursday’s nurses’ strike.
She said: “What we saw yesterday was a really mixed picture, so we’re receiving varied reports from trust leaders across the country.
“I think we do know that there were some real pressure points around emergency departments, for example, including things like the slow transfer of patients out of those departments.
“In terms of things like routine operations, so far we’ve heard that probably between around 40 to 60% of those routine operations have been cancelled in places where the strikes were held.
“So it’s fair to say that there’s been a relatively significant impact and I think it was a very demanding day overall, on the frontline in the NHS.”
NHS data on Thursday showed that one in six patients last week waited more than an hour to be passed to A&E teams after arriving in an ambulance. Just over one in three had to wait at least 30 minutes.
David Sloman, NHS England’s chief operating officer, along with the national medical director, Stephen Powis and the chief nursing officer, Dame Ruth May, issued a joint letter to NHS trusts on Thursday evening warning of “extensive disruption”, and said measures should also be put in place to ensure ambulance patient handovers are kept to no more than 15 minutes.
Several senior Tories have urged the government to negotiate with nurses. They include the former health minister and current health committee chair, Steve Brine, former cabinet ministers Jake Berry and Robert Buckland and the doctor and former health minister Dan Poulter.
The Daily Express, one of the government’s most supportive newspapers, published a front page plea for ministers to resolve the dispute. Its headline said: “For Nurses, for Britain, sit down and sort this out.”
The current wave of industrial action reflects an “appalling failure” from the government, the Labour chair, Anneliese Dodds, has said.
Asked by Sky News whether a Labour government would present the nurses with a higher pay offer, she said: “We would be talking with them about the right settlement to be reached, one that works for public finances, that works for the health service, that works for patients, and that works for the staff within it.”
