Patients requiring specific care including chemotherapy will be protected from strike action following an agreement between the Royal College of Nurses (RCN) and senior nurses.
In a letter to the RCN, chief nurses laid bare concerns over patient safety during planned strikes this Thursday (December 15) and next Tuesday (December 20). Dame Ruth May, chief nursing officer for England, and her counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, asked RCN general secretary Pat Cullen to allow union members to break the picket line to cover A&E services, cancer therapy and urgent mental health care.
But the RCN said the letter was 'already out of date' following a meeting with top clinicians where key points - including the need to agree exemptions from the industrial action - were agreed.
READ MORE: Screaming shoppers who were locked inside a counterfeit street store are rescued by police
Dame May, and her counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, asked RCN general secretary Pat Cullen to consider the “concerns” of nursing leaders about the union’s assumption “that night duty staffing on day duty is safe.”
“This decision has the potential to significantly impact on the safety of patient care,” they wrote. They asked for assurances that nursing services providing “end of life care and good pain and symptom relief” continue in order to “alleviate unnecessary distress” for palliative patients.
They said they were “very concerned that people with the highest level of (mental health) need and staff teams managing the highest levels of risk will be kept safe” if mental health services are not exempt from industrial action.
This evening, the RCN confirmed that emergency cancer services have been derogated, while specific derogations have been agreed for mental health and learning disability and autism services as part of an emergency crisis response.
NHS community teams will provide palliative care and clinically urgent interventions such as insulin as they operate at Christmas Day-level staffing, while in-patient areas will see night duty staffing.
“Front-door” urgent care assessment and admission units including A&E will see Christmas Day-level staffing, while the same for paediatric-only A&E departments are fully exempt from strike action.
The RCN also insisted cancer patients will get emergency and clinically urgent surgery on strike days, arguing that any suggestion otherwise is a “politically-motivated smear”.
READ NEXT:
- Mum who swindled ill man and teacher out of £50k SPARED jail as her child is 'very ill with Strep A'
- 'Utterly reckless' swimmers caught on camera moments after swimming in freezing Salford Quays
- Medics to treat alcoholics in Manchester with ketamine
- 'School run parents block my driveway then abuse me in front of children when asked to move'
Bombshell new poll would see Tories WIPED OUT in the North - three years on from election success
