Shropshire health bosses call for fresh talks to solve NHS pay dispute with latest strike looming
"Tired staff" need a resolution in the NHS pay dispute, county health bosses have warned.
Successive rounds of industrial action have affected Shropshire's health services in recent months, with nurses, junior doctors, and consultants all walking out in a pay dispute with the Government.
A further junior doctors strike is planned for next month with no resolution in sight.
A group of the county's senior health officials have now spoken of the impact of the current pressures on staff, and called for the Government and unions to hold fresh talks and find a solution.
Simon Whitehouse, the chief executive of NHS Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin, said staff had faced the strain of Covid, and then the pressure of attempts to cut the backlogs created by the pandemic.
He the current situation is "not good for our patients and it is not good for our staff".
He said: "The real challenge in this space is staff were tired anyway as we came out of Covid, then the ask of saying can we go harder, faster, further, against the backlog of the recovery programmes and industrial action, is taking a toll on colleagues."
Mr Whitehouse credited staff "across the board" in how they have dealt with the pressures brought about by industrial action, but said workers had their limits.
He said: "We have seen the goodwill of staff to go extra and further but there is a limit to how much we can ask people to do on a continual and repeated basis, because it does take its toll."
He added: "We would ask the Government and the unions to get back round the table and look to find a solution to this."
Sir Neil McKay, the chair of Shropshire, Telford and Wrekin Integrated Care Board, said there was frustration at the ongoing dispute – and its impact on the ability to get services back on track after the pandemic.
He said: "We thought we had got plans to improve and ramp up activity to deal with additional waiting lists from Covid so it is very, very disappointing that those plans, we are not able to implement them as we would like, and particularly because of these strikes."
He added: "It is all deeply frustrating as plans we wanted to make to deal with long waiting times for surgery, cancer waits, are being affected at the moment because of this industrial dispute, and it is depressing frankly that there does not seem to be any end to it."
Patricia Davies, CEO of Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust, said: "We need a resolution to this and that has to be the Government intervening and having discussions to bring this to a conclusion as quickly as possible."
She added: "Staff are really getting tired and getting really frustrated, not at the individuals who are striking for sure, but we need some type of leadership, particularly to get back round the table and get a resolution."
