27 January 2015
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has put plans in place to ensure urgent and emergency services continue to run as usual and that any disruption to non-urgent services is minimal during the national strike period planned for this Thursday 29th January 2015.
Patients due to come into hospital during the strike period are being advised to attend their appointments or procedures as planned unless they are contacted by the hospital. Emergency and clinically urgent services will run as normal.
Michael Harper, Chief Operating Officer, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “We will of course respect members of staff’s decision to strike or not but our first priority is patient safety and ensuring there is as little disruption to services as possible. We have been working in partnership with Union representatives and agreed that clinically urgent and emergency care services will continue as normal. This includes services such as A&E, trauma, emergency operations, chemotherapy, radiotherapy and dialysis on that day. Community health services are also running as normal.”
“For non urgent appointments and procedures, we are asking patients to turn up as planned and if there is any change to their appointment we will contact them direct. In the unlikely event that an appointment has to be postponed we will re-arrange it as soon as possible. We have put plans in place to try and limit disruption and inconvenience for patients but we would ask patients to be aware that there may be longer than normal waits to be seen although we will endeavour to keep all patients informed of extended wait times.”
ENDS
