Staff Writer
Hospital physicians in England staged the largest walkout in the National Health Service’s history on Thursday, raising concerns for patient safety.
The NHS, which is already struggling with a substantial pandemic backlog, has been subject to industrial action for eight months, the most recent of which was the unprecedented five-day halt over pay and employee retention.
On a picket line outside London’s University College Hospital, junior doctor Arjan Sing, 27, said, “The NHS has been running on goodwill and this is the last chance to change that.”
He claimed that several of his colleagues intended to go to nations that “care about their doctors.”
He continued, “Doctors have realized they work in a global market and are not limited to this country.”
In recent months, nurses, ambulance personnel, and other medical staff have all joined picket lines, adding to the burden on patient appointments.
Junior doctors — those who are not consultants — will participate in a strike that will go until 7:00 am (0600 GMT) on Tuesday.
As the UK fights a devastating cost-of-living issue, there have been walkouts across the sector over the past year, from train drivers to attorneys.
On July 20, senior hospital doctors in England—known as consultants—will also start a 48-hour strike; on July 25, radiographers will follow suit.
‘ Destructive’
Junior doctors have requested their 2008–2009 pay in response to the government’s acrimonious dispute with them.
something that, according to the government, would entail a pay reward of around 35% on average.
According to the Junior Doctors Committee of the British Medical Association, as salaries have not kept up with the rate of inflation, doctors have actually seen a real-terms pay cut of 26% during the past 15 years.
As it fights to lower inflation, the government argues that it would be too expensive to retroactively adjust employees’ compensation to reflect inflation since 2008 and has instead granted a five percent raise.
BMA leaders Robert Laurenson and Vivek Trivedi said, “Today marks the beginning of the longest single walkout by doctors in the history of the NHS, but this is still not a record that needs to go into the history books.”
We can end the strike today if the UK government simply adopts the Scottish government’s strategy and drops its absurd precondition of refusing to speak to physicians while strikes are announced in favor of making a meaningful offer.
Similar shutdowns in June and April caused significant inconvenience, necessitating the rescheduling of tens of thousands of hospital appointments and procedures.
For everyone who wants waiting lists to decrease and NHS staffing levels to increase, the complete inflexibility we currently see from the UK government is perplexing, irritating, and ultimately detrimental, Laurenson and Trivedi said.
A record number of seven million people — over three million of whom had been waiting more than 18 months — were awaiting treatment in April.
