The British Medical Association (BMA) has announced that hospital consultants and junior doctors will take joint strike action between:
- 7am on Monday 2 October to 7am on Thursday 5 October
The strike action will significantly impact services run by the Trust. This includes services at Bedford Hospital and the Luton and Dunstable University Hospital (L&D).
We want to assure all patients that we are working hard to make sure we can continue to provide emergency and life-preserving services during these days of industrial action. However, to help us safely manage the impact of the strikes, we anticipate we will need to postpone some non-urgent appointments and procedures scheduled for the strike days.
Our teams will contact patients directly if we need to re-schedule your operation or appointment. However, if you have an appointment at either of our hospitals on these days, please assume this is going ahead unless you have been told otherwise.
Helping us manage demand
If you need medical advice but it’s not an emergency, please consider using a different service to get the care you need. You could:
- call NHS 111 or visit the NHS 111 website
- make an appointment with your GP
- go to a local pharmacist
In our Emergency Departments (EDs), we will assess you as quickly as we are able to. If we feel you need to stay, we will aim to treat you as soon as possible, this will be based on the urgency of your clinical need.
If we feel you could be seen elsewhere, we will ask you to do so and advise you on the most appropriate place to go. If you then decide to stay, please be aware that you could be waiting a long time to be seen.
We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience this has caused and fully appreciate everyone’s understanding and co-operation during this challenging period whilst this national dispute between the Government and Trade Unions continues.
Paul Tisi, Medical Director at Bedfordshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said,
“We are grateful to our staff for their hard work, flexibility and commitment to ensuring our patients can continue to receive urgent and emergency care during this time.
Thank you to the public for their ongoing support. We would like to remind everybody that we run a ‘No Excuse for Abuse’ policy at the Trust and violence or aggression towards our staff and/or patients will not be tolerated.”