NHS patients urged to continue coming forward for care during doctors’ strikes

Hospitals and local teams have been preparing as usual ahead of this latest round of strikes and have plans in place to minimise disruption to patient care and ensure life-saving care continues.

This will be the twelfth strike from resident doctors since March 2023, resulting in 49 days of disruption to NHS services – equivalent to almost ten working weeks of industrial action over this period.

NHS England has asked hospital chief executives to keep routine operations going to the fullest extent possible during this round of strikes and only reschedule appointments and other activity in exceptional circumstances to safeguard patient safety.

The NHS is therefore advising the public to continue to attend any planned appointments they have scheduled over the strike period unless they have been contacted to reschedule.

Primary and urgent and emergency care services will continue to be available for those who need them. The public should use 111 online as the first port of call for urgent but not life-threatening issues during industrial action so that they can be directed to the best place for their needs. Patients who need emergency medical care should continue to use 999 or come forward to A&E as normal.

Professor Meghana Pandit, NHS England National Medical Director, said: “There is no doubt this industrial action will take a toll on patients and NHS staff, and it is disappointing it is going ahead.

“While it will mean some appointments won’t be able to go ahead as planned, we are doing all we can to limit this, and patients should continue to use NHS services in the usual way.

“The public should dial 999 in an emergency, and otherwise use 111 online, your local pharmacist or GP, and patients should attend NHS appointments unless told otherwise.”

The previous round of industrial action by resident doctors at the end of June last year saw 61,989 inpatient and outpatient appointments rescheduled, and 23,001 staff were absent from work due to strikes at the peak of the action.

Since strikes began at the end of 2022, the cumulative total of hospital appointments rescheduled is now close to 1.5 million (1,486,258) across the NHS.

Resident doctors, previously named junior doctors, make up around half of all doctors in the NHS and have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.