Michelle Cady, Chief Operating Officer, at North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust speaks about the upcoming junior doctor strike
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Hello, my name is Michelle Cady and I'm the Chief Operating Officer at North West Anglia
00:06 NHS Foundation Trust. We operate Peterborough City Hospital, Hinchingbrook Hospital and
00:11 also Stamford and Rutland Hospital. During the industrial action, our main priority is
00:16 to make sure we can continue to run our hospitals and care for our patients as quickly and as
00:22 safely as possible. We are working hard to make sure that we keep any disruption to a
00:27 minimum and that we can maintain as much activity in the form of clinics and surgery and tests
00:35 as we can, but we are expecting the industrial action to be an extremely challenging time
00:39 for us. We will get in touch with patients who have an appointment booked during the
00:44 strike period if their appointment needs to be rescheduled. So if your appointment is
00:49 going ahead as planned, you will not hear from us, so please do attend as normal because
00:54 we will be ready to see you. I really appreciate how very disappointing this will be for anyone
01:01 who's waiting for treatment or investigations and if we do have to reschedule, we are very,
01:07 very sorry about that. We are working very hard to make sure that is kept to a minimum
01:12 and we will reschedule those appointments and tests and procedures as soon as we possibly
01:16 can. Just to say again, patients who we don't contact in advance about their appointments,
01:22 they should please attend their appointment as planned. We will be running those clinics
01:28 and services for you. Our emergency departments are there to treat the most urgent and life-threatening
01:34 conditions. It would be a huge help to us if patients only attended A&E or the emergency
01:40 department if they require emergency or very, very urgent care. What would be great is using
01:47 alternative NHS services wherever possible such as pharmacies, GP services for everything
01:53 other than life and limb-threatening situations and this would be a great help to our hospitals
01:58 if people could do this. If people do, however, need medical help for something that isn't
02:05 life-threatening or a serious injury, the other option is to call NHS 111 or they have
02:12 NHS 111 online which has a referral tool which is very helpful. That service directs people
02:18 to the most appropriate place for the care or treatment that they need.
02:22 [BLANK_AUDIO]