Operations cancelled as strike hits hard

STRIKE action... Kirsty MacLean leads the junior doctors on the picket line at the Royal Oldham Hospital.

MORE than 2,100 appointments and 231 non-urgent routine operations were cancelled by The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust to ensure safe staffing levels across its four hospital sites during the junior doctor’s strike action.

The Trust, which runs The Royal Oldham, North Manchester and Fairfield General Hospitals and Rochdale Infirmary, was forced to contact patients in advance of the national industrial action, which saw a full withdrawal of junior doctors’ labour between 8am and 5pm on Tuesday and Wednesday.

In total, 231 non-urgent routine operations (elective surgery including overnight inpatient and day case procedures) and 2,113 out-patient clinic appointments were cancelled.

Professor Matthew Makin, Medical Director at The Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “This is an unprecedented situation for the NHS.

“The trust has robust plans to ensure that all of our hospital wards are safely staffed with medical and nursing input and essential services are maintained during the strike days.

“Our staff have been working incredibly hard to ensure that our plans are in place to protect the safety and welfare of our patients which remains our top priority.

“Unfortunately we have had to contact patients to cancel more non-urgent surgery and outpatient appointments than we did for the last strike days.

“Where this is the case we have contacted our patients concerned directly to reschedule their appointment. They will not go to the back of the queue and we will ensure that they are seen as quickly as possible.”

Nationally, more than 100,000 routine appointments and nearly 13,000 operations were postponed - but NHS bosses said hospitals coped “admirably”.