More than 30,000 hospital appointments have been cancelled in just under two years due to strikes. A total of 33,034 acute outpatient and inpatient appointments at the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust had to be rescheduled due to industrial action from December 2022 onwards. According to NHS England data, 18,508 shifts were not attended due to striking.
Nationally, more than 1.5 million appointments had to be rescheduled with more than one million working days lost. In June, the trust said it would “only reschedule appointments and procedures where necessary”.
The most recent spate of strikes by junior doctors, of which there were 11 over 18 months, has now ended following a government pay offer which will see the consultants’ salaries rise by between 3.71 and 5.05 per cent.
Doctors starting NHS foundation training will receive a base pay of £36,600, an increase from £32,400. A full-time doctor entering speciality training will now earn £49,900, up from £43,900. READ MORE: Brighton and Hove prescribed highest amount of weight loss jab in UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting said: “We inherited a broken NHS, the most devastating dispute in the health service’s history and negotiations hadn’t taken place with the previous ministers since March.
"Things should never have been allowed to get this bad. That’s why I made ending the strikes a priority and we negotiated an end to them in just three weeks. "I am pleased that our offer has been accepted, .