Exemptions for Great Ormond Street amid ‘serious concerns’ about strike

Announcing the incident, Mat Shaw from GOSH said "these children have no voice in the debate and we must protect them"

Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) has been granted exemptions to ease the pressure on its services during the bank holiday nursing strike.

The London children's hospital expressed "serious concerns" about staffing as Royal College of Nursing (RCN) members prepare to walk out.

During the strike, from Sunday to Monday, nurses in the RCN union will not provide emergency care in A&E.

However, RCN said it would consider exemptions.

Union leader Pat Cullen said mitigations were granted on Friday following a request from GOSH, insisting nurses working at the hospital would "never ever" leave child patients at risk.

The exemption for GOSH means some striking staff could be called in to 11 areas, including intensive care, so that the services provided were deemed safe.

RCN has also agreed exemptions in areas of some other hospital trusts in England.

Mat Shaw, the hospital's chief executive, said: "Although the safety critical exemptions granted to us by the RCN will help improve the staffing situation at the hospital, we will remain in a business continuity incident until we are confident we can safely staff our services during the RCN strike."

'Scaremongering'

According to NHS England, the "business continuity incident" announced by GOSH is defined as any event likely to disrupt delivery of services from "acceptable predefined levels".

Ms Cullen said any suggestion that mitigations were not being put in place were "factually incorrect".

She told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "All of the exemptions that Great Ormond Street requested of the Royal College of Nursing were granted earlier yesterday.

"None of those exemptions were turned down.

"It is really important for the public to know that and it is also really important for the staff that work there to know that."

A 48-hour walkout from 30 April includes nurses in A&E, intensive care and cancer wards across England

"The most fantastic nurses work at Great Ormond Street Hospital and I do not want to be scaremongering them that we have put a process in place that they would all walk out on their patients, that would never be the case," she added.

The protocol surrounding exemptions requires the RCN to pass its approval on to NHS England, which is then responsible for notifying the individual organisation, Ms Cullen said.

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Ms Cullen added that any derogations being sought by other organisations would be given "very careful consideration" to ensure critical areas of care can continue.

Analysis, Nick Triggle, BBC health correspondent:

Great Ormond Street Hospital is not the only part of the NHS that has been given an exemption.

Under trade union laws the RCN has to ensure life-and-limb cover is provided.

So while there are no national exemptions this time for services such as chemotherapy and intensive care, the union is responding to requests from NHS trusts for help.

In the first instance it is asking services to try to find cover in critical areas from nurses who will not be striking - around a third of nurses are not RCN members - or from other staff groups.

NHS bosses say many areas are struggling to do this so over the past 24 hours the RCN has granted local exemptions to about one in six NHS trusts facing strike action.

This does not mean the strikes are being suspended just that some nurses are being allowed to be called off the picket line to provide the minimum level of cover needed for life-preserving care.

It is mainly being granted in areas such as intensive care, emergency departments and specialist children's services.

The strike was called earlier this month after RCN members rejected a government offer for England of a 5% pay rise for 2023-24 and a one-off payment of at least £1,655 to top up last year's salary, depending on staff grade.

The walkout will involve NHS nurses in emergency departments, intensive care, cancer wards and other wards.

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