Well, here we are again. Another day, another doctor’s strike, and the NHS is once again being held hostage by the very people who vowed to care for us. Health Secretary Wes Streeting is out there promising to “keep disruption to a minimum,” bless his cotton socks, but let’s be honest, we’ve heard it all before, haven’t we? It feels like just a few years ago we were talking about a “rise” in morale and getting things back on track, and now? We’re right back at square one. It just goes to show, you give an inch, and they’ll take a mile.
The audacity of it all is truly baffling. These resident doctors, as they’re now calling our junior doctors a fancy new term for the same old demands knew the salary when they signed up for this profession. Did they not? No one forced them into medical school, no one held a gun to their head and made them choose a career in the NHS. They understood the commitment, the long hours, and yes, the pay scale. So, to then turn around and hold the most vulnerable people in society to ransom with these strikes is, frankly, unfair.
We’re told that NHS England has ordered hospitals to only cancel treatments in “exceptional circumstances” this time. And that senior doctors are stepping in to cover the striking staff. Oh, goodie. As if our already stretched senior medical professionals don’t have enough on their plates. The British Medical Association (BMA) is, of course, wringing its hands about staff being stretched too thinly, conveniently forgetting that they are the ones orchestrating this chaos. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, writing in the Times, even urged them not to go down this “damaging road,” but clearly, his pleas fell on deaf ears. They’re more concerned with their “rights” than with the “progress we have made in rebuilding the NHS over the last year.” It’s truly a slap in the face to everyone else working tirelessly in the health service.
Let’s be clear: while doctors in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland are apparently more reasonable, our English resident doctors are once again causing “a huge loss for the NHS and the country.” Streeting admits these strikes “will hit the progress we are making on turning the NHS round.” He’s “determined to keep disruption to patients to a minimum,” but we all know what that really means: more cancelled surgeries, more delayed appointments, and more anxiety for patients who’ve already waited far too long. Hassnain Shahid’s three year old daughter, whose lung surgery was cancelled, is just one tragic example of the very real human cost of this self serving action.
The BMA claims pay is still down by a fifth since 2008, even after a 5.4% average pay rise this year following a 22% increase over the previous two years. Let that sink in for a moment. They’ve had a 22% increase over the past two years, plus another 5.4% on top of that, and they’re still not satisfied. They’re starting on nearly £39,000 in their first year out of medical school, rising to over £73,000 by the end of training, with extra payments for unsocial hours. Many people would bite their hand off for that kind of salary. And still, they cry poverty. “Resident doctors are not worth less than they were 17 years ago,” whine BMA co-leaders Dr Melissa Ryan and Dr Ross Nieuwoudt. Perhaps, but they’re certainly not worth an endless stream of pay rises at the expense of patient care.
Previous walkouts led to over a million cancelled appointments. One million! And while NHS sources are optimistically saying “this one will feel very different,” the BMA is already warning that the new approach could cause “even greater problems and risk safety.” It’s almost as if they want things to be as bad as possible to prove their point.
Honestly, the impact of these strikes and the distress they will cause patients rests squarely with the BMA. As Stuart Andrew, the Conservative shadow health secretary, rightly points out, “Labour’s spineless surrender to union demands last year opened the door to this.” We gave them an inch, and now they’re trying to take the whole darn mile. It’s high time these doctors remembered their oaths and put their patients first, instead of holding them to ransom for more money.
