Health workers joined forces in a day of action yesterday which was predicted to cause more disruption to patients than ever before.

Nurses and paramedics and call-handlers walked out of work at NHS trusts across West Devon and the country as part of a long-running dispute with the government over pay.

Nurses are striking again today and ambulance workers with Unison are due to walk out on Friday.

Health unions, representing nurses (the Royal College of Nursing), and ambulance workers (the GMB and Unite) all took strike action yesterday — the largest combined strike action in the NHS on one day.

NHS employers and service providers have urged the Government and unions to re-open talks as they warn the post-covid ‘catch-up’ work to reduce waiting lists is jeopardised by more strikes.

NHS unions have staged action on separate days in recent weeks. The nurses’ action caused planned non-life threatening surgery and treatment to be postponed. While ambulance workers continued to respond to life-threatening call-outs while still on the picket line.

One of the GMB pickets was staged close to Derriford Hospital in Plymouth.

Steve Howells, a student paramedic based at Derriford, joined the picket line. He said: ‘Although I’m on the picket line about pay and supporting my colleagues, it’s more than that.

‘It’s all linked though. The trouble is that over the past few years demand for emergency response has been increasing, while hospitals are always full and we cannot move our patients into beds, so have to treat them inside ambulances outside emergency departments.

‘This turns us into care workers, rather than emergency response teams. So staff are leaving due to stress and because the job isn’t what they trained for.’