Resident doctors across the country today downed their instruments, resorting to striking to protest ongoing grievances surrounding pay, employment and work conditions
Resident doctors across the country today downed their instruments, resorting to striking to protest ongoing grievances surrounding pay, employment and work conditions.
Organised by the BMA, British Medical Association, crowds gathered at hospitals across England and braced the cold and wet rainy weather to let their issues be known.
At St Thomas’ Hospital, Westminster, a mere stone’s throw away from the House of Parliament, resident doctors and their supporters were armed with orange BMA umbrellas, signs and placards – chanting for pay restoration.
Dr Arthur Joustra, 27, an SD1 paediatrics trainee from Nottinghamshire, told the Mirror why he had travelled to the streets of London to support the strike action.
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The doctor said: “I’ve come to support the strikes today because of two main things. The employment crisis currently unfolding in medicine.
“The secondary issue is pay restoration. Pay has taken a massive hit since 2008 levels. We’re not asking for a pay rise. We’re not asking to be paid a penny more than we were being paid in 2008 – adjusted for inflation.”
The BMA’s resident doctors’ five-day walkout across England started on Friday morning and will continue until Wednesday as many of the union’s resident doctors withhold their labour.
Despite the strike action the NHS strives to keep almost all services running and is urging patients to still attend appointments unless advised otherwise.
Dr Joustra who worked for a year in A&E spoke of the chilling conditions doctors are faced with. He explained NHS staff needed to be adequately paid and staffed in order to keep up with the demand the NHS faces.
During his time at A&E Dr Joustra said: “It was not uncommon to see [patients endure] a 12-hour wait. It was not uncommon to see people dying in corridors. It was not uncommon to be doing CPR in rooms that are not fully equipped to be doing that because all the other rooms are full with equally unwell patients.”
He added: “This is a problem that is not just about doctors’ unemployment. It’s about an NHS that is failing to keep up with the demand.”
The doctor stressed NHS workers needed to be properly valued and compensated for their labour in order for the health service to deliver the excellent quality of care for its patients.
Dr Joustra added: “We all want a fantastic NHS that remains free at the point of access and remains [to deliver] a world standard of quality of care for its patients.
“We can’t get there without valuing the people who make the NHS what it is.”
Speaking to the Mirror the chair of the BMA Dr Tom Dolphin spoke of the breadth of the unemployment crisis doctors in the UK were facing.
The BMA chair said: “We’ve got 30,000 applications coming in this year for 10,000 training posts. That’s going to mean if we don’t solve this problem, we’re going to have thousands and thousands of resident doctors unable to progress in their training, unable to become consultants and GPs in future, which is a big issue.”
Dr Dolphin told the Mirror a better system needed to be established to prioritise doctors’ training to ensure the UK can retain the talented workforce of doctors in the country.
He added: “We also need the system to prioritise doctors trained and working in the UK at the moment so that we can retain the talent in this country.”