Strikes, patient outcomes, and the cost of failing to act

Essex, Ryan; Brophy, Sorcha A.; Sriram, Veena

doi:10.1136/bmj-2022-072719

Cited by 5 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…This is important for a number of reasons. First, while concerns about patient safety are often raised by governments, the public and health workers alike when discussing planned/ongoing industrial actions, the evidence on the effect of strikes on patient outcomes and overall healthcare delivery is mixed (Essex, Brophy, et al, 2023). Thus, there is no clear link between strike action and patient harm (Essex, Milligan, et al, 2022; Essex, Weldon, et al, 2022).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This indicates a disconnect between perceptions of harm as a result of strikes and actual impact. Second, the harm‐focussed discourses largely overlook ‘the trade‐off between the immediate consequences of striking and the accumulating patient safety risks related to chronic underinvestment in healthcare systems that led healthcare workers to strike in the first place’ (Essex, Brophy, et al, 2023). Third, the arguments put forward by some social media users also revealed common misconceptions about healthcare strikes among parts of the public, most notably a lack of awareness about exemptions and healthcare services maintained during strike action.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Social media opposition to the 2022/2023 UK nurse strikes

Kalocsányiová,

Essex,

Brophy

et al. 2023

Nursing Inquiry

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Previous research has established that the success of strikes, and social movements more broadly, depends on their ability to garner support from the public. However, there is scant published research investigating the response of the public to strike action by healthcare workers. In this study, we address this gap through a study of public responses to UK nursing strikes in 2022–2023, using a data set drawn from Twitter of more than 2300 publicly available tweets. We focus on negative tweets, investigating which societal discourses social media users draw on to oppose strike action by nurses. Using a combination of corpus‐based approaches and discourse analysis, we identified five categories of opposition: (i) discourse discrediting nurses; (ii) discourse discrediting strikes by nurses; (iii) discourse on the National Health System; (iv) discourse about the fairness of strikers' demands and (v) discourse about potential harmful impact. Our findings show how social media users operationalise wider societal discourses about the nursing profession (e.g., associations with care, gender, vocation and sacrifice) as well as recent crises such as the Covid‐19 pandemic to justify their opposition. The results also provide valuable insights into misconceptions about nursing, strike action and patient harm, which can inform strategies for public communication.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social media opposition to the 2022/2023 UK nurse strikes

Kalocsányiová,

Essex,

Brophy

et al. 2023

Nursing Inquiry

Self Cite

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show abstract

“…Ryan Essex and colleagues draw on international experience to consider the impact of strikes on patient care (doi:10.1136/bmj-2022-072719). 5 The evidence is far from clear, and better research is needed on a difficult question to study, but the authors propose that patients may well benefit when strikes lead to improvements within health systems.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Patient safety and strikes: aspects of love

Abbasi¹

2023

BMJ

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Political action in nursing and medical codes of ethics

Essex,

Mainey,

Dillard‐Wright

et al. 2024

Nursing Inquiry

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Political action has a long history in the health workforce. There are multiple historical examples, from civil disobedience to marches and even sabotage that can be attributed to health workers. Such actions remain a feature of the healthcare community to this day; their status with professional and regulatory bodies is far less clear, however. This has created uncertainty for those undertaking such action, particularly those who are engaged in what could be termed ‘contentious’ forms of action. This study explored how advocacy and activism were presented in nursing and medical codes of ethics, comparing disciplinary and temporo‐spatial differences to understand how such action may be promoted or constrained by codes. The data for this study comes from 217 codes of ethics. Because of the size of the corpus and to facilitate analysis, natural language processing was utilised, which allowed for an automated exploration of the data and for comparisons to be drawn between groups. This was complemented by a manual search and contextualisation of the data. While there were noticeable differences between medical and nursing codes, overall, advocacy, activism and even politics were rarely discussed explicitly in most codes. When such action was spoken about, this was often vague and imprecise with codes speaking of ‘political action’ and ‘advocacy’ in general terms. While some codes were far more forthright in what they meant about advocacy or broader political action (i.e., Nursing codes in Denmark, Norway, Canada) more forceful language that spoke in specific terms or in terms of oppositional or specific actions (e.g., civil disobedience or marches) was almost completely avoided. These results are discussed in relation to the broader literature on codes and the normative questions they raise, namely whether such action should be included in codes of ethics at all.

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Strikes, patient outcomes, and the cost of failing to act

Abstract: Ryan Essex and colleagues consider whether patients have more to gain than to lose from healthcare worker strikes in poorly functioning health systems

Cited by 5 publications

References 23 publications

Social media opposition to the 2022/2023 UK nurse strikes

Social media opposition to the 2022/2023 UK nurse strikes

Patient safety and strikes: aspects of love

Political action in nursing and medical codes of ethics

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