Woman waits 16 hours at Royal Berkshire Hospital's A&E as junior doctors strike
An 88-year-old woman has been left waiting 16 hours at an emergency department in Berkshire on the day junior doctors began the longest consecutive strike in the history of the NHS.
The woman's daughter-in-law described the system as "broken" as she stood waiting at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading.
She said: "I sympathise with the whole situation that the NHS has got itself into. But my mother-in-law has been here for 16 hours, in A&E, sat in a chair.
"The system is broken. Whether it's the junior doctors, the bed situation, resources in general, but 16 hours for an 88-year-old to be sat in a chair and not really being seen properly isn't acceptable.
"I completely sympathise with where they're coming from, everybody is struggling with the cost of living, my daughter is a teacher, she doesn't get paid brilliantly either.
"The whole public service is just a bit of a mess."
Dom Hardy, Chief Operating Officer at the Royal Berkshire Hospital said: "We're asking some of our staff to do extra shifts so particularly our consultants, our most senior specialist doctors, as well as senior staff from nursing and other professions as well.
"Secondly, we're not able unfortunately to run all of our routine services today, so some people who should have had an outpatient clinical appointment today are not having that appointment."
The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust is not the only hospital under extreme pressure this winter.
On Wednesday, the NHS Trust which runs the Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth declared a critical incident as its emergency department reached full capacity.
Six days of strike action by junior doctors in England began at 7am on January 3 until 7am on January 9.The strike amounts to 144 consecutive hours of industrial action – the longest in the 75-year history of the health service.
The strikes will impact almost all routine care, with consultants covering as the NHS prioritises urgent and emergency cases.
The British Medical Association (BMA) union wants junior doctors to get a 35% pay rise, which it says would restore their real earnings to 2008 levels, but the government says this is unaffordable.
ITV News Meridian's Kara Digby reports from the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading:
NHS Providers' chief executive of NHS Providers, Sir Julian Hartley, said the "unprecedented" action will lead to delays in care for thousands of patients, warning it "couldn’t come at a worse time" while the NHS is in the "grip of peak winter pressure" across the entire system.
"Trusts have planned thoroughly to keep patients safe and to provide critical and emergency care but the scale of the challenge in an unprecedented six-day strike will be bigger than ever before," he added.
"We need a speedy resolution to this dispute as we see the risk of industrial action by other staff returning in our health services."
Figures released last month showed more than 1.2 million appointments have had to be postponed because of industrial action in the NHS since it began in December 2022.
Strikes by junior doctors last month caused around 86,000 appointments to be put back.
Dr Rob Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, co-chairs of the BMA’s Junior Doctors Committee, said in a statement: "We spent the holiday period hoping we would get the 'final offer' that the Health Secretary had promised us last year.
"Sadly, we have received no such offer despite repeatedly saying we would meet for talks any time over Christmas.
"We will continue to offer to meet throughout these coming strikes. All we need is a credible offer we can put to members and we can call off these strikes.
"This strike marks another unhappy record for the NHS – the longest single walkout in its history – but there is no need for any records to fall: we can call off this strike now if we get an offer from government that we can put to members."
Health and Social Care Secretary Victoria Atkins said: "January is typically the busiest time of the year for the NHS and these strikes will have a serious impact on patients across the country.
"I urge the BMA Junior Doctors Committee to call off their strikes and come back to the negotiating table so we can find a fair and reasonable solution to end the strikes once and for all."
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