Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has been granted exemptions to ease the pressure on its services during the bank holiday nursing strike. The London children’s hospital expressed “serious concerns” about staffing as Royal College of Nursing (RCN) members prepare to walk out.
During the strike, from Sunday to Monday, nurses in the RCN union will not provide emergency care in A&E.
Union leader Pat Cullen said mitigations were granted on Friday following a request from GOSH, insisting nurses working at the hospital would “never ever” leave child patients at risk.
The exemption for GOSH means some striking staff could be called into 11 areas, including intensive care, so that the services provided were deemed safe. RCN has also agreed exemptions in areas of some other hospital trusts in England.
Mat Shaw, the hospital’s chief executive, said: “Although the safety critical exemptions granted to us by the RCN will help improve the staffing situation at the hospital, we will remain in a business continuity incident until we are confident we can safely staff our services during the RCN strike. According to NHS England, the “business continuity incident” announced by GOSH is defined as any event likely to disrupt delivery of services from “acceptable predefined levels. Ms Cullen said any suggestion that mitigations were not being put in place were “factually incorrect”.
She told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “All of the exemptions that Great Ormond Street requested of the Royal College of Nursing were granted earlier yesterday. None of those exemptions were turned down.
“It is really important for the public to know that and it is also really important for the staff that work there to know that. The most fantastic nurses work at Great Ormond Street Hospital and I do not want to be scaremongering them that we have put a process in place that they would all walk out on their patients, that would never be the case,” she added.
The protocol surrounding exemptions requires the RCN to pass its approval on to NHS England, which is then responsible for notifying the individual organisation, Ms Cullen said. Ms Cullen added that any derogations being sought by other organisations would be given “very careful consideration” to ensure critical areas of care can continue.
Source: BBC
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