Industrial action affecting NHS services – BMA industrial action 11 April to 15 April 2023 (inclusive)
April 12, 2023
The industrial action outlined above will continue until 6.59am on 15 April at the Trust.
Thank you to all colleagues for your support in helping us to maintain safe care during the industrial action. The Trust continue to work closely with the group leads to ensure robust plans are in place to maintain a safe level of service for patients and to support our colleagues who will be taking strike action.
Members of our executive team along with senior colleagues will be conducting wellbeing checks in all areas.
Arrangements for pickets
Further to discussions with local and Regional BMA representatives there will be pickets held on the City Hospital site. The Trust and local BMA representatives will maintain close contact to ensure appropriate support for all colleagues.
Pickets will only run at City Hospital, from 7.30am until 2.30pm each day, with no pickets on Friday.
Picketing is a common feature of industrial disputes. It is agreed between the Trust and the BMA that this will be undertaken peacefully with the purpose of exchanging information or peacefully persuading others to abstain from work.
Pickets may inform people about why they are striking, to seek support and ask people not to:
- do some of their usual work, and/or,
- go into work.
Pickets must not prevent people from going to work or doing their usual work if they want to do so.
As previously outlined, the Trust fully recognise that colleagues may want to exercise their legal right to take strike action. We have created an FAQs document which can be found on Connect for additional information and support about strike action. There are two FAQ documents, one for applicable for all staff groups and a second with pertinent FAQs for medical staff (Industrial Action (swbh.nhs.uk)). We would welcome any additional questions that colleagues may have and would advise that these are directed to your group HR support or to contact the HR advice line on ext. 6680 or via email at swb-tr.SWBH-GM-HR-Enquiries@nhs.net with any queries you may have.
Cancellation of all non-essential business and meetings:
In order to enable clinical and operational teams to plan for and manage patient safety during this period we are standing down all corporate meetings up to and including Tuesday 18 April.
Our Tactical and Strategic Command and Control systems are in place.
Standard operating procedures and support guidelines for consultant colleagues
Consultant colleagues undertaking additional duties can now refer to the attached ‘Consultant Accelerated Syllabus’ for a comprehensive list of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) covering routine ward activities, prescribing, requesting, hand over and emergency department specific tasks.
Consultant Accelerated Training Syllabus – Links and Resources v4.4
IT support during industrial action
The IT support line (ext. 4050) will extend their opening hours and will be available until midnight during the industrial action.
Informatics engineers will also be available onsite until midnight across the four days. There will also be IT floorwalkers going around to check on teams and give support where required this includes any issues regarding Unity.
A Unity expert will also be available overnight on-call and can be contacted via the main switchboard.
Completing an IR1 during industrial action
If colleagues identify any issues arising as a direct result of industrial action that require the completion of an IR1, please insert a prefix in the title – Junior doctors industrial action. This is so that we can improve our planning and ongoing resilience
Out of hours food and refreshments
To support colleagues during the industrial action food and refreshments will be available for purchase out of hours at both Sandwell and City Hospitals.
From the 11 – 14 April:
- City – Arches open until 1.30am
- Sandwell – Main reception open until 11.30pm
Food available – snack type items (sandwiches), hot and cold beverages, hot grab go box meals (pizza, baked potatoes and fish and chips/curry).