People have been urged to only use hospitals for life-threatening emergencies as junior doctors hold four days of industrial action.
The strikes – which began at 7am and will continue until the day shift starts on Saturday, April 15 – are estimated to impact 350,000 appointments and operations across the UK.
It has been branded the “most disruptive in NHS history” by Professor Sir Stephen Powis, national medical director for the NHS in England.
Backed by the British Medical Association (BMA), junior doctors have walked out in a worsening dispute over pay.
Hospitals across Bradford district - including Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) and Airedale Hospital - expect to face significant pressures.
On the picket lines outside the BRI on Tuesday, junior doctors could be seen standing together with signs reading: ‘Restore our pay, restore your NHS’.
What it means for you
Senior doctors and other medics who are not on strike have been diverted to cover services such as A&E and maternity care.
If people attend A&E with non-urgent or emergency conditions they will be waiting significantly longer than usual.
Airedale NHS Foundation Trust and Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust have issued a joint statement on the action.
Leanne Cooper, Chief Operating Officer at Airedale NHS Foundation Trust and Saj Azeb, Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Like other hospitals throughout the country we are experiencing 96 hours of industrial action by junior doctors.
“Patient safety is our priority and our clinical and operational teams have developed plans for each of our services to ensure safe care can be maintained. We’d like to thank all our teams for their hard work and support in this.
“All urgent and emergency care treatments are still going ahead. However, as a result of our focus on safe patient care we have had to rearrange some operations and outpatient appointments. We know this is frustrating and we will do our best to reschedule them as soon as possible. Patients impacted by the cancellations will be contacted directly all other patients should attend their appointment as normal.
“Members of the public should continue to seek medical care in the usual way, but we would urge people to only attend A&E departments in Bradford and Airedale with life or limb-threatening emergencies.”
For advice about or treatment of a non-urgent condition people should visit www.nhs.uk, or go to their local GP or pharmacist.
Anyone who needs medical help fast but is not in an emergency should go to www.111.nhs.uk or call 111.
The NHS Confederation, which represents NHS trusts, urged the Government and the BMA to “get on” with negotiations.
“We would emphasise today, once again, the importance of finding a way for these two sides to start to talk to each other because at the moment it feels like their positions are extremely entrenched,” the organisation’s chief executive Matthew Taylor told Good Morning Britain.
“Both sides are going to end up negotiating – we all know that – so I guess we want to say ‘please get on with it’.”
He added: “You can’t take out half your medical workforce and not have an impact on patient safety, on patient dignity.”
What do junior doctors want?
The BMA has estimated that up to 50,000 junior doctors are out on strike.
The union claims junior doctors in England have seen a 26 per cent real-terms pay cut since 2008/09 because pay rises have been below inflation.
The union has asked for a full pay restoration that the Government said would amount to a 35 per cent pay rise – which ministers have said is unaffordable.
The union said that junior doctors earn £14.09 per hour in their basic pay packet.
The Government's view
Downing Street insisted there would be no talks with the BMA unless junior doctors abandoned their starting position of a 35 per cent rise and called off the strikes.
A No 10 spokesman said Rishi Sunak was being kept up to date about the impact of the industrial action.
“It continues to be the case that we call on the BMA junior doctors to cease their strikes and revise their starting point for negotiations, which is 35 per cent, which we continue to believe is unreasonable and is not affordable for the British taxpayer,” the spokesman said.
The 35 per cent demand was “completely out of step with pay settlements in other parts of the public sector” and would cost £2 billion.
The spokesman added: “We know that the strike action will have an impact on patient care. The last set of strikes saw around 180,000 operations cancelled and that was a three-day strike, so we’d expect to see higher numbers this week.”
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