The senior medic warned that the strikes were exacerbating long-standing health problems.
Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said waiting times in emergency rooms have been worse over the past two months than they were at the same time last year, which, given ongoing labor disputes, could be difficult to recover at the end of the month. day year.
One in ten people who go to the emergency room in England face a ‘dangerous’ wait of at least 12 hours before staff can deal with their problem, according to previously hidden NHS data. Data released by NHS England last week for February showed that 125,505 people – 10% of all who went to a hospital emergency room in England this month – had to wait at least 12 hours before being admitted to hospital. translated or written out.
Answering a question about the conditions of the emergency service, D. Boyle on BBC Radio 4 Today Program: “It’s really hard. We have all seen and heard about all the problems that arose in December 2022. And we have a slight improvement in January.
“But what happened in February and March determined the path we are on to a worse winter by the end of this year. If you look at the length of stay we’re seeing in emergency rooms, it’s a lot worse than at the same time last year.”
He said that “the vast majority of them are caused by a deeper underlying problem. We have already had a seven-day strike of doctors, but these problems have been accumulating for at least five years.”
Calling for more capacity, Mr Boyle said the NHS needed more money and the funds needed to be placed “in a much more planned way”.
In an increasingly bitter dispute over tariffs, chief physicians called on a third party to act as an intermediary between junior physicians and the government. The Academy of the Royal Colleges of Medicine (AoMRC) urged both sides to “work swiftly with an independent body to explore how the impasse can be broken in the interest of patients and the NHS as a whole.”
AoMRC Chair Dame Helen Stokes-Lampard said she was “independent” of what form the mediator should take, but stressed that her organization was “gravely concerned” about the current state of the NHS.
“We all suffer, we all want to find a solution. We all want the NHS to be in a better place. Whatever it takes to start talking, let’s do it,” she said.
This is because health leaders fear the prospect of unions, including the British Medical Association (BMA) and the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), coordinating or unifying strikes that would have a huge impact on the NHS.
Unite ambulance staff announced on Wednesday that they would be leaving on May 2 with nurses and teachers. The RCN nurses’ strike has already been called from April 30 to May 2 after a vote rejected a 5 percent salary agreement with a one-time bonus averaging 6 percent.
Last week, the BMA urged the government to start negotiations to resolve the thorny wage dispute through the Acas arbitration service. Downing Street said there would be no talks unless the young doctors abandoned their original position of a 35 per cent pay rise and called off the strikes.
Dame Helen called for negotiations to resolve the dispute between the young doctors and the government as the AoMRC urged both parties to be flexible.
She said that Today Program: “It’s been a week since the culmination of the most disruptive young doctors union action in NHS history. You’ve heard the headlines about the 196,000 pending or pending cases. In fact, the reality is much more, only what is counted counts. Many hospitals did not provide data, and data on this was not requested from general practitioners.
“And it will take an awfully long time to make amends, and in the meantime the patients are suffering. But even (in) this dispute, which no one needs, doctors also suffer. It must be brought to a successful conclusion, and before any negotiations can begin, preliminary negotiations must be held to determine the parameters.”
Professor Philip Banfield, Chairman of the Board of the BMA, said the union’s organization was not “firmly entrenched” and added that calls for a 35 percent wage increase “were not the set number here.”
“Doctors are the solution, not the problem,” he told the BBC. “And what amuses me a bit is how people are treated as a cost rather than an investment. We have the longest lines. These waiting lists are not caused by strikes, but by chronic underfunding. It drains the workforce,” he said.
Professor Banfield dismissed any suggestion that the BMA had taken root and said he had approached Akas to act as independent arbitrators.
Almost 200,000 hospital appointments and procedures in England had to be postponed as tens of thousands of young doctors staged a 96-hour strike from 11 to 15 April over wages.
NHS England data showed that 20,470 inpatient procedures had to be postponed, as well as 175,755 outpatient appointments for a total of 196,225. As a result of union action, an average of 26,145 workers were absent from work each day.
Source: I News
I’m Raymond Molina, a professional writer and journalist with over 5 years of experience in the media industry. I currently work for 24 News Reporters, where I write for the health section of their news website. In my role, I am responsible for researching and writing stories on current health trends and issues. My articles are often seen as thought-provoking pieces that provide valuable insight into the state of society’s wellbeing.