Thousands of appointments cancelled, procedures put on hold and ambulance call-outs delayed during strike action in Northern Ireland health service

The Unite, Nipsa and Unison trade unions all staged strike action in a long-running campaign over pay.

The Northern Ireland Ambulance Service launched an appeal to the public to "call us only in life-threatening emergencies such as cardiac arrest, loss of consciousness, breathing difficulties, severe bleeding and others" in order to ensure "the levels of cover required to respond to the most urgent calls".

The trade unions in the ambulance service - primarily Unison and Unite - had worked with managers in advance to make sure "life and limb" high priority calls would still be covered even while the strike was ongoing.

Regional health trusts, meanwhile, also provided updates throughout the strike on the level of disruption encountered.

The Belfast Trust said on Thursday evening that over 560 outpatient appointments had been cancelled, along with 93 inpatient and day case procedures, 41 community services appointments - including mental health appointments - and 94 allied health appointments.

A Trust spokesperson said: "We are working collectively to try and minimise the impact. We know there will be disruption across all our services and we are sorry for this."

The Western Trust did not provide precise numbers for cancelled appointments, but said it expetced "disruption to hospital and community services" to have been "significant".

Several day centres across counties Londonderry, Fermanagh and Tyrone were closed entirely for the day, while laboratory and hospital pharmacy services, hospital catering, family and childcare, homecare and mental health services were also rocked by the strike action.

The Northern Trust said it was forced to put two dozen appointments on hold across “urology, colposcopy, endoscopy, general surgery, ENT, ERCP and bronchoscopy” services due to the strike, postpone 15 endoscopy appointments, and postpone another 10 outpatient appointments across a range of specialities.

Hundreds of mental health and learning disability patients also missed out on services yesterday, and dozens of health visitor appointments were also called off in the Northern Trust.