NHS patients face more disruption as radiography staff strike over pay deal

Members of the Society of Radiographers will walk out for four hours from 9am and will work to rule for the rest of the week.

The action follows the first ever strike by midwives last week and comes ahead of a stoppage on Friday by prison officers in psychiatric hospitals including Broadmoor and Rampton.

The action by diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy staff is their first strike over pay since 1982.

Radiology departments providing ultrasound, CT and MRI scans, X-rays will see appointments cancelled, although emergency and urgent care will be provided.

Officials at the York NHS trust said its radiography departments would only carry out urgent work today and there were likely to be delays for the rest of the week.

Managers at Barnsley’s hospital said most booked appointments had been rescheduled and patients had been informed. Urgent care and breast screening services would not be affected.

At Goole, Scunthorpe and Grimsby’s hospitals, NHS bosses said all emergency, urgent inpatients and emergency theatre patients requiring scans would get them today but non-urgent services would be hit.

Richard Evans, chief executive officer of the Society of Radiographers, said: “The anger that they and other NHS workers feel is very strong.

“The last thing that radiographers want is to hurt the people that they serve. Steps have been taken to minimise the impact on patients. This disagreement between NHS staff and the government has been going on for a long time and radiographers have lost patience with an employer that they feel does not value the hard work that they do.”

The society warned that if there was no improvement in pay, there was a real concern that more radiographers will leave the profession, making current shortages worse.