Industrial action: 27 June – 2 July

June 28, 2024

The British Medical Association announced that industrial action by junior doctors will take place from Thursday 27 June, 7am – Tuesday 2 July, 7am.

The Trust is working closely with 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.

There are a number of things that colleagues can do to help ensure the safe running of our services which we have listed below.

Planning a hospital discharge early

It’s vital we plan ahead especially during industrial action. The integrated discharge hub can support you with this from 8am – 8pm, seven days a week. You can contact them on ext. 3147.

Be sure to check out this short video below about planning discharges early:

Could your patient be admitted to our virtual ward?

If your patient has past the acute stage of their illness, but still needs a level of intervention to support their recovery, they might be able to be discharged into the care of our virtual ward – these are consultant led and allow patients to continue their recovery in the comfort of their own home, but with constant monitoring and medical input. If you are unsure about what a virtual ward is, please watch the short video below:

You can contact the virtual ward on ext. 2664, (option 1, option 4) to discuss your patient with them. Our virtual wards cover the following specialities:

• Frailty
• Respiratory
• Cardiology
• Occupational therapy
• Paediatric (ext. 2602)

The service consists of MDT staffing support, including therapies, the integrated discharge hub and the wider community to support patients at home.  The virtual ward is available to all specialties where the patient meets the criteria and the team is able to support. If you are uncertain but believe your patient would benefit from the virtual ward, please contact the team.

IT support during industrial action

The IT service desk (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.

An engineer will also be on-call after midnight and can be contacted via the main switchboard

Unity training

In order to support our more senior medical colleagues who are supporting the Trust during the industrial action, training material for Unity is available by clicking here.

Wellbeing

We will be supporting staff throughout the strike action, offering hot and cold food as well drinks during the extended opening hours at our Costa outlets. See times below:

The Trust fully recognises that colleagues may want to exercise their legal right to take strike action. We have created an updated frequently asked questions (FAQs) document which can be found on Connect for additional information and support about strike action.

There are three updated documents:

• Junior Doctors – Industrial Action
• Pay – Industrial Action
• Consultant/Medical Staff TOIL – Industrial Action

You can access them by clicking here.

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.