Nurses across the UK have voted in support of industrial action, with strikes now expected to take place before the end of 2022.
Health secretary Steve Barclay said he “deeply regretted” that strike action had been supported but reassured that emergency services will “continue to operate”.
Emergency care will remain staffed while Royal College of Nursing members stage walkouts, maning that intensive care and other key services such as cancer care will remain unaffected.
However, routine services such as elective surgery, district nursing and mental health resources will be impacted.
Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the NHS Confederation, called for the government and the Royal College of Nursing to resume talks to avoid industrial action “playing out over many months” as has been the case with rail strikes.
A lack of voter turnout in almost half of the NHS trusts in England means that industrial action will take place in some but not all.
Elsewhere, nurses in every service in Scotland and Northern Ireland voted in favour of strike action, with all but one also doing so in Wales.
It will be the first time that Royal College of Nursing members will be staging UK-wide strike action in its entire history, while some nurses at local management bodies and national institutions such as NHS England will also take part.
The Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary Pat Cullen said that the industrial action was a statement that “enough is enough” and the government had to act and increase nurses’ pay.
“Ministers must look in the mirror and ask how long they will put nursing staff through this,” Cullen said.
The strikes come at a time when the waiting lists for hospital treatment stand at a record level of more than seven million people.
Despite the impact that the strikes will have on those awaiting treatment, the Royal College of Nursing insists that the action comes with patient outcomes in mind.
Cullen argued that staffing shortages, partially due to low pay, were already affecting the standard of care that could be provided.
However, the government insisted that its pay rises had been in accordance with recommendations made by the independent NHS Pay Review Body.
In England and Wales, NHS staff have already been awarded an average pay rise of 4.75 per cent with higher increases for those with the lowest pay grade. Meanwhile, the Scottish government has offered a higher flat rate of more than £2,200, which would see a newly qualified nurse earning around eight per cent more than was previously the case.
Ministers also awarded NHS staff a three per cent pay rise in 2021 when salaries across the rest of the public sector were frozen.
However, the Royal College of Nursing is pursuing a pay increase of more than 12 per cent compared to current levels, which would take nurses’ salaries five per cent over the Retail Price Index’s measure of inflation.
Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash
