For the first time in over 106 years, members of the Royal Collage of Nursing (RCN) voted to take strike action on Thursday 15th December and Tuesday 20th December.

Over 177 NHS trusts will be affected including primary hospitals across the whole of the UK, including the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff.

The strikes are expected to last for 12 hours on both days and there could be further action in May next year.

The RCN are adamant that patient safety is ‘paramount’ and that there will be defined areas of care that will remain exempt to prevent causing death or permanent disability including emergency services.

It is anticipated that outpatient appointments and non-urgent operations will be postponed and general nursing care in the hospitals on both these dates will be like that experienced on a weekend.

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The US Supreme Court has recently overturned the right to legal abortions, often referred to as the Roe vs Wade case. This means that there are now 26 conservative states that are either likely or certain to make abortion less accessible, or altogether banned.

This decision has fuelled the worldwide fire regarding abortion laws and rights, and has many UK citizens questioning what this change could mean for abortion rights in this country. Here, we discuss the current UK laws around abortions and what options there are regarding the abortion process.

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Public Health Wales have announced changes to the current routine cervical screening programme. Currently, people with a cervix between the ages 25 and 49 in Wales are invited to screening tests every three years.

The change announced in January, which brings Wales in line with the UK National Screening Committee recommendations, will reduce the frequency of cervical screenings to every five years for this age group and matches the time gap in screenings for those ages 50 to 64. More...

If you follow our blog, then you’ll know we recently published our advice on whether you can seek compensation if your operation is cancelled due to Covid-19. Well, it’s not just surgeries that are being delayed due to the risk of infection.

Being diagnosed with cancer can be life changing and statistics suggest that 1 in 2 people in the UK will get cancer in their lifetime. So, it is understandable that thousands of people are going through treatment at any given time, something that has been affected for many going through this experience during the pandemic. More...

BBC news reported that approximately 4.7million people were waiting for routine operations in England in February 2021. 388,000 people waited more than a year for non-urgent surgery. This is a staggering amount when there were just 1,600 waiting more than a year for non-urgent surgery before the pandemic began.

In Wales in 2021, over 115,000 patients had been waiting more than a year for an operation. The number of patients waiting over 36 weeks was 200,000 higher than the same month in 2019.  

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