IT IS “unsurprising” that, in a crisis-stricken NHS, health-care workers are voting on whether to strike, the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, has said. She was introducing a House of Lords debate on ambulance waiting times in England, on Thursday last week.
The Bishop, who was Chief Nursing Officer (1999-2004) at the Department of Health under the Blair administration, wanted to know how the Government was responding to the long delays in ambulance handovers outside hospitals. “The NHS Confederation says that eight out of ten patients who were delayed beyond 60 minutes were assessed as having had an experience that had potentially harmed them, and nearly one in ten experienced severe harm as a result,” she said.
The delays were not only causing “extreme anxiety for patients” but putting pressure on staff and ambulance services, who were then unable to respond to other crisis calls. Those living in more deprived areas were most likely to feel the impact of ambulance delays, the Care Quality Commission had reported.
More than 150,000 ambulance workers have been balloted on strike action in England and Wales. Ballots are due to close at the end of this month.
The Bishop said: “Ambulance handovers must be improved. However, without a workforce that is valued, supported, and listened to, it is difficult to see how this is possible. In some ways, it is unsurprising that this balloting on action is being undertaken.
“According to the GMB acting national secretary, a third of ambulance workers think that a delay they have been involved with has led to a death. Can you imagine the impact that has on the well-being of health-care and ambulance workers? Health-care workers are also experiencing the cost-of-living crisis.
“This will be the biggest ambulance workers’ strike for 30 years if it goes ahead, and this workforce is not in isolation.
“It cannot be overstated how serious this is, not just for patients, or our health, but for the economic recovery of this country. This is a whole-systems problem which requires a whole-systems solution.”
Targets for ambulance handover — when patients are moved from an ambulance into hospital — were relaxed this year from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. The Association of Ambulance Chief Executives found, however, that 42,000 patients waited longer than one hour in August this year, and 522 patients waited for more than ten hours.
A health minister, Lord Markham, told the Lords that “ambulances are an utmost priority for this Government,” and he agreed that it was a “whole-system issue”.
“Central to the whole issue of ambulance handovers is, as I like to call it, the flow —the whole-system issue. It is only when we resolve bed occupancy and the flow into adult social care that we will have the free flow through the whole system and the reduction in handover times,” he said.
Nurses have also been balloted on strike action, and are widely expected to strike. This would be the first UK-wide strike by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in its 106-year history. The results were due to be announced on Wednesday, but the Royal College of Nursing’s chief executive, Pat Cullen, warned in advance that nurses had “spoken very clearly”.
The RCN has said that it is committed to ensuring that emergency and urgent care are kept running during a strike.