NHS bosses have criticised the British Medical Association for its \u00ab\u00a0increasingly hardline\u00a0\u00bb approach in rejecting emergency requests for striking doctors in England to return to work.<\/p>\n
A system known as ‘derogation’ is in place whereby the NHS can ask for resident doctors, who are taking part in a five-day walkout, to cross the picket line where patient safety is at risk.<\/p>\n
As of Sunday evening, 18 requests by hospitals for derogations had been rejected in this strike – the twelfth in the long-running pay dispute – with nine accepted.<\/p>\n
The BMA said while it was ready to respond to emergencies, poor planning and the push to continue non-urgent care in this strike had stretched staffing too much.<\/p>\n
However, NHS England accused the doctors’ union of putting safety at risk, criticising a \u00ab\u00a0remote BMA panel\u00a0\u00bb for \u00ab\u00a0second-guessing\u00a0\u00bb doctors on the ground who were trying to look after patients.<\/p>\n
A central committee of senior BMA doctors makes decisions on each derogation request.<\/p>\n
NHS England said it was particularly worried about a number of requests relating to cancer care being turned down.<\/p>\n
And it said the BMA was sitting on some requests for hours, with some rejected because hospitals would not pay striking doctors premium rates to come back in.<\/p>\n
Before this strike started, the BMA had only agreed to five derogations during the whole dispute.<\/p>\n
Among the requests agreed was a doctor to work at Nottingham City Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit over the weekend.<\/p>\n
Three BMA members were also brought in to work a night shift at the Northern General in Sheffield.<\/p>\n
But the BMA rejected a request by Milton Keynes Hospital for a doctor to carry out prostate cancer checks. In that case the BBC understands a doctor did return to work under their own volition.<\/p>\n
A BMA spokesman added: \u00ab\u00a0It remains our position that this agreement will be available for the NHS to rely upon should a safety-critical, urgent event occur.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0That process is there day and night throughout industrial action, and we remain ready to respond to any emergency requests.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0However, we need to be clear that the purpose of this agreement is not to facilitate the continued delivery of non-urgent care at the same time as senior doctors are covering for residents taking industrial action, as trusts simply do not have enough senior doctors to do that safely.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n
NHS England sources said it was particularly disappointed with the rejections as the national organisation was now vetting every request from hospitals to ensure a consistency in approach between different places.<\/p>\n
Every request, they said, was based on \u00ab\u00a0rigorous assessment\u00a0\u00bb.<\/p>\n
\u00ab\u00a0We absolutely recognise the legal right for people to strike, but we also recognise that it’s essential to maintain as many services for patients as possible,\u00a0\u00bb they added.<\/p>\n
The five-day strike by resident doctors is due to run until 07:00 on Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NHS bosses have criticised the British Medical Association for its \u00ab\u00a0increasingly hardline\u00a0\u00bb approach in rejecting emergency requests for striking doctors in England to return to work. A system known as ‘derogation’ is in place whereby the NHS can ask for resident doctors, who are taking part in a five-day walkout, to cross the picket line […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8935\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/placedesnations.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}