More than 500 appointments cancelled at Shropshire hospitals during junior doctors' unprecedented strike
More than 500 appointments were cancelled at Shropshire's major hospitals during junior doctors' unprecedented six-day strike.
NHS England has released figures showing the impact of the most recent industrial action, which finished on Tuesday morning.
It shows that across the six days, from January 3 to 9, a total of 716 shifts at Shrewsbury & Telford Hospital NHS Trust (SaTH) were affected – with the highest number, 179 junior doctors, walking out on the final day of the action.
SaTH currently employs 289 junior doctors, 270 senior doctors, and 307 consultants.
Prior to the action, local health bosses had warned that they expected 'significant disruption' as a result of the strikes.
The A&E departments managed by SaTH - at Princess Royal Hospital in Telford (PRH) and Royal Shrewsbury Hospital (RSH) - have both been under extreme pressure in recent months, with some of the worst performance in the country throughout 2023.
On several occasions throughout the latest strike action, SaTH had used social media to warn the public that its A&E departments were 'very busy'.
The NHS England figures show that the strikes led to the cancellation of 528 inpatient and outpatient appointments at the trust.
That comes after 280 were cancelled during three days of strikes before Christmas.
The NHS has said that since the beginning of the British Medical Association dispute with the Government, a total of 1,333,221 appointments have been cancelled.
Across the country, last week’s latest action saw 113,779 inpatient and outpatient appointments rescheduled, and 25,446 staff absent from work due to strikes at the peak of the action on January 3.
NHS national medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis said the walkout had come with "an enormous cost".
He added that the impact was likely to be even higher than the figures indicate.
"The longest strike in NHS history has led to unprecedented disruption for patients and their families, and while staff have planned extensively and worked tirelessly to keep patients safe, it comes once again with an enormous cost," he said.
"That cost is clear in these figures – likely to be even higher in reality – with more than 113,000 appointments postponed at a time when services are already under huge pressure from rising flu and Covid cases and we are seeing a huge demand for care.
"Medical leaders and frontline staff are telling us they are very concerned about the coming weeks as the cold weather bites and more people may need hospitalisation. This puts an incredible strain on staff who have been covering striking colleagues as we continue to navigate one of the most difficult times of year.
"Colleagues across the NHS will now be doing everything they can to make up for lost time as we continue to make progress on addressing the elective backlog and ensure patients get the care they need."
The ongoing dispute between the BMA and the Government centres on junior doctors' calls for a 35 per cent pay rise – they argue it is to make up for the 26.2 per cent fall in the value of their pay since 2008.
They have been offered a three per cent rise on top of the average 8.8 per cent increase they were given in the summer.
