Nearly 600 appointments postponed by Colchester's trust in last strike

At the East Suffolk and North Essex Trust (ESNEFT) which covers Colchester, 529 acute outpatient appointments and 65 acute inpatient procedures were postponed due to the five-day junior doctor strike at the end of February.

ESNEFT also revealed the percentage of junior doctors of a total of 648 on strike each day, noting that not all junior doctors would have been planned to be on shift.

The total percentage of the junior doctor workforce on strike on for Saturday February 24 was 11.2 per cent and Sunday February 25 was 11.1 per cent.

While during the week, the total percentage of junior doctor workforce on strike on February 26 was 41.4 per cent, on February 27 it was 42.5 per cent, and on February 28 it was 40.2 per cent.

Emergency - Nick Hulme ESNEFT chief executive revealed there was a higher than expected number of people at A&E during the strikes for this strike (Image: Warren Page/Page Pix)

Nick Hulme, chief executive of ESNEFT, said: “We have robust plans in place to mitigate the impact of strike action and maintain safe, quality care in our hospitals. All those plans worked well during the most recent junior doctors' strike.

“We saw a higher number of attendances in our emergency departments than we expected – our teams coped extremely well with that demand. They also worked hard to keep as much elective work going as possible and to keep the number of postponements to a minimum.

“As always, we will reschedule any appointments and operations as soon as we can. We know it is our patients who feel the impact of industrial action most. We apologise to anyone whose procedure or appointment had to be postponed.”

Crisis - Dr Roshan Rupra BMA East of England Chair said the NHS was on its knees (Image: BMA)

Roshan Rupra, chair of the East of England Regional Junior Doctors Committee, said: "The underlying issue here is that the NHS is on its knees, in 2022-23 hospitals in England cancelled 12million total appointments, despite there being just two days of strike action.

“The last thing junior doctors wanted to do in February was go out on strike, in Colchester or anywhere else in the country. We recognise that industrial action causes disruption and it is for that reason that it is taken only as a last resort."

He added: “Throughout industrial action we’ve maintained discussions with NHS England, stressing that trusts should be planning services on and around strike days carefully and prioritising people with the most urgent needs."