Yesterday (6 February) marked the biggest strike of health workers in the history of the NHS with both nurses represented by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) and GMB and Unite Ambulance workers combining strike action.

Ambulance workers were striking over pay and conditions with those on the picket line reported that low paid staff are leaving to find better paying jobs and that money is not being spent in the right places.

Nicola Griffiths who was on the picket line on the third combined strike between the GMB and Unite said one of the biggest problems is that money is not being spent in the right places.

Nicola Griffiths (LDR).

The paramedic said: "For the majority of us it is about conditions that patients are being put through due to the lack of funding in the NHS. Money is not being put in the right places, the NHS is failing dramatically but the government seems to be ignoring that.

"The whole system just needs reassessing and in some ways going back a little to what used to work as well as bringing in new things because it is as if the NHS has become stagnant with no moving forward.

"The people that are representing us in this country are predominantly elitist, there is no one who represents the normal working class folk, that is the biggest problem in this country."

The paramedic who has been with West-Midlands Ambulance Service for nine years continued: "We are sat in queues and the radio is going off, control will radio through 'cardiac arrest' and we are sat there in the ambulance unable to do anything knowing that a patient and their family are going through the worst time of their lives and there is no one to go and help them.

"Morale is at an all time low because we are not doing what we are supposed to be doing. When you do go to a job that the patient has been waiting for hours for – they are dead. All we can say is sorry that we didn't get here sooner but we can't do anything."

Another paramedic on the picket line Stu Wright said that over the past few years he has seen a deterioration in service.

Stu Wright (LDR).

Mr Wright said: "I would say definitely under the Tory leadership over the past 12 years it has got worse. We are stuck waiting outside hospitals from anything between three and 24 hours, full 12 hour shifts with patients stuck on ambulances, patients dying because they can't get into the A&E units.

"NHS staff are basically broken and the government needs to do something about it and the problems is the government are not willing to talk.

"We won't be going away and we will still be striking here until there is a better service for patients."

Mr Wright who has worked in the ambulance service for 19 years added: "The problem is recruitment and retention is a massive issue in the ambulance service and other areas of the NHS. I think there are around 144,000 vacancies, people are moving away because of the poor pay. 

"On an average 12 hour shift in Stoke you could do eight – ten jobs potentially, now on a regular basis you are doing one job because after you respond you are queuing at the hospital.

"Over the past ten years there has been a 20 per cent fall in pay with inflation. Hopefully with better pay we can retain and recruit more people to the service."

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