British nurses set to launch historic strike, as pay and staffing crises threaten the NHS

British nurses set to launch historic strike, as pay and staffing crises threaten the NHS

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London
CNN
 — 

Nurses across much of the UK are set to launch a historic strike on Thursday, as they prepare to walk out of hospitals and onto picket lines after several years of falling pay and declining standards left the country’s nationalized health care system in a state of crisis.

As many as 100,000 members of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) – the UK’s biggest nursing union – are expected to take industrial action in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, in the latest and most unprecedented of a wave of strikes that has swept Britain this winter.

It will be the largest strike in the RCN’s 106-year history.

But it comes after several years of hardship for employees of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), a revered but beleaguered institution that is straining due to staffing shortfalls, sky-high demand and stretched funding.

“I went into…

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