Haringey patients waiting as appointments cancelled due to strike

Olivia Opara on the impact of the junior doctors strike on local hospitals

A group of striking junior doctors holding placards on a picket line outside North Middlesex hospital on Wednesday 15th June 2023 — Junior doctors protesting outside North Middlesex hospital yesterday – (Credit – Olivia Opara)

The NHS is prioritising emergency and life-saving care during a junior doctors strike for three days this week, which will be including strikes at North Middlesex Hospital.

Junior doctors across England began industrial action this Wednesday (June 14th), staging a 72-hour walk out that ends at 7am on Saturday. As a result of ongoing strikes, most routine appointments in hospitals including the Whittington in Archway and the North Middlesex in Edmonton have been cancelled.

Making up around half of all NHS doctors, junior doctors have decided to strike following “unproductive” negotiations with the government. Ministers turned down the British Medical Association’s demand for a “fully restored” pay deal to reverse a real terms cut of 26% over the last 15 years.

Junior doctors on the Middlesex Hospital picket line declined to comment on the strikes.

55-year-old Stacey, a Northumberland Park resident, had a “crucial medical assessment” for suspected uterine cancer cancelled today (June 15th): “I have been waiting forever and it has taken me a year to get the NHS to find out what is going on and everyone that I know has had all their appointments cancelled too,” said Stacey.

Since her symptoms of severe cramps first showed up in 2020, Stacey has been struggling to get appointments with the NHS. She said: “I have these serious pains and I am on the highest dose of [prescription] Codeine to cope and I can’t work because of it and this appointment was to hopefully find out the cause and what the next step is.”

Having worked in the medical field in America herself before relocating to the UK ten years ago, Stacey sympathises with the NHS as she understands the struggles it faces and how NHS staff are overstretched: “I understand that doctors need to get paid and that they need to get paid fairly, but you are now putting people’s health in danger and as a medical professional you take the Hippocratic Oath to do no harm – at this rate, it’s going to take people dying for something to be done.

“However, I will still defend the NHS because I think that it is good and it is better than what the US and other countries have.”

Dr Vivek Trivedi and Dr Robert Laurenson, co-chairs of the BMA Junior Doctors Committee, said: “If the government doesn’t change their position, we will strike throughout the summer. This means we will call a minimum of three days of action every month for the duration of our mandate for industrial action.

“Four in ten junior doctors are looking to leave the NHS, and the health service staggers under a workforce crisis. This is no time for the government to play games on pay. We have made a start but the government now needs to get serious.”

Despite preparing for the strikes, NHS bosses fear that the number of rescheduled appointments and continuous strike actions “will have an enormous impact” on routine patient care, especially those needing round-the-clock treatment.

Professor Sir Stephen Powis, National Medical Director for the NHS in England, said: “As we enter the seventh month of industrial action across the NHS, and as this action becomes more frequent, we are now seeing an extraordinary cumulative impact on our services and crucially on our staff, who continue to go above and beyond to maintain safe patient services during this challenging period.”

An NHS statement also included the following guidance for the strike period:

The NHS in many parts of the country has faced high demand for urgent care services. The NHS is advising people to follow guidance in the warm weather, including keeping out of the sun at the hottest time of the day, drinking plenty of fluids and applying sunscreen.

Older people are particularly at risk in warm weather and are advised to keep living spaces cool by closing windows and drawing curtains during the day and opening them at night when the temperature outside has gone down. It’s also important to check the temperature of rooms where people at higher risk live and sleep.

To make sure safe care continues to be available for those in life-threatening situations, NHS staff will be asked to prioritise emergency and urgent care over some routine appointments and procedures.

Appointments and operations will only be cancelled where unavoidable and patients should still come forward unless they are contacted. Where appointments are cancelled, patients will be offered an alternative date as soon as possible.

The NHS has said that people who need care must still access the care they need – only using 999 and A&E in life-threatening emergencies and using NHS 111 online and other services for non-urgent health needs.

Pharmacies and GPs are largely unaffected by the strikes so patients can still get appointments and health advice.

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