We must strike, junior doctors insist as walkout to hit Midlands' NHS services for 96 hours
Junior doctors have been left with no option but to strike, it was claimed today as NHS services in the region were braced for significant disruption.
A four-day national walk-out was due to get under way this morning and will continue until Saturday.
Health bosses have warned it will bring ‘immense pressure’ on services. But Dr Shivam Sharma, a member of the British Medical Association West Midlands regional junior doctors committee, said doctors had faced years of pay cuts in real terms, while the job has got more pressured, and argued the action was necessary.
The 27-year-old said: “This is our last resort. We have been trying to communicate with the Health Secretary from August last year, and he won’t listen to the position on pay restoration and why it is important.
“It is very unprofessional from the Health Secretary.
“We don’t want to be going on strike, ultimately the reason we are doing this is we have been backed against the wall with nowhere else to go.”
He said many doctors were choosing to leave the NHS and warned of a “mass exodus” of doctors without action on the issue.
The British Medical Association wants a 35 per cent pay rise for junior doctors to make up for 15 years of below-inflation wage rises – but the Government has called the claim unrealistic. The strike follows industrial action by junior doctors across last month, where they walked out for 72 hours.
The 96-hour walkout starts at 6.59am on Tuesday, and continues until 6.59am on Saturday.
Health chiefs have stressed emergency care will be prioritised with people with non life-threatening emergencies being signposted to NHS 111 to avoid the strain on A&E.
Dr Sharma, 27, said that the current situation meant doctors had faced years of pay cuts, while the job has got more pressured.
He said that many doctors were leaving the NHS and the country because of their frustrations – and not being able to provide the standard of care they want for patients.
"Our pay has been cut by 26 per cent in real terms, and we argue we are not worth 26 per cent less, we are not doing 26 per cent less work, or seeing 26 per cent less patients. In fact the job has only gotten harder in that time," he said.
"So many of my friends are burnt out. They are leaving in their droves for places like Australia, New Zealand, so they can deliver the kind of patient care they want to."
Dr Sharma warned of a "mass exodus" of doctors without action on the issue.
He said: "Our campaign is about pay restoration. We just want our pay to keep up in real terms, which it has not. In fact it has gone down by a quarter and that is quite demoralising.
"I worked during the Covid pandemic, we put our lives on the line, our families' lives on the line, working long hours with no vaccine, no PPE, and after the pandemic we were rewarded with further pay cuts.
"The Health Secretary needs to realise pay restoration will be great for England as a whole. In absolute values it's a five to ten pound increase in the hourly salary of doctors."
He said that many doctors are starting on £14 an hour and are also facing significant costs from training to get to that point.
"Even as a first year doctor you are in charge of hundreds of patients a night so you have a lot of responsibility," he said.
"Ask the public in A&E on a Friday night if it is reasonable their doctor is paid £19 an hour and the resounding answer will be yes."
He added: "On a personal note I have met so many experienced doctors who are in the seventh and eighth year of being a trainee doctor and they are really struggling as well because they have such high professional fees, because they are at that age of starting to have a family and people relying on you, and they are struggling to make ends meet."
Dr Sharma also said there was a misconception over the work junior doctors do, saying they make up a major portion of doctors seen by patients every day.
He said: "The word 'junior' comes with a lot of assumption but these doctors are anything but junior. They can be very senior doctors with a lot of responsibility, skills and experience.
"I think most of the time when you go to a hospital you will be seeing a junior doctor, whether you go to a clinic, A&E, most of the time the person you are speaking to is a junior doctor. There is a big misconception about what a junior doctor actually does."
Dr Sharma said they felt like they had been left with no option but to strike.
"The Health Secretary keeps trying to position himself and play politics, saying he is open to talking when he is repeatedly playing games with the BMA, he said."
Dr Sharma said he understood the impact of the action, but said it was necessary to protect patients in the long term, as well as his colleagues.
Asked what he would say to the public about the decision he said: "I am so sorry about all of this. All of this could have been avoided if the Health Secretary actually came up with a credible offer and started some meaningful dialogue with doctors.
"Ultimately we used to have standards in this country and where are they now? You used to be able to be seen within four hours in an A&E, now you are lucky if it is anything like four hours. I think patients and doctors in this country deserve better."
