Tuesday’s nine-hour “all out strike” stems from a dispute over new pay and working conditions that has already resulted in a series of industrial actions over recent months, but this is the first time it has included withdrawing emergency care.
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There are 53,000 junior doctors – graduates with years of experience but who have yet to complete their training – in England’s National Health Service (NHS).
As part of the ongoing dispute between the Government’s Department of Health and the British Medical Association (BMA) junior doctors will not be working in A&E for a second day running. However, the strikes have led to more than 100,000 routine appointments and nearly 13,000 non-emergency operations being cancelled or postponed.
In a previous poll on The Lincolnite, which was taken by 167 people, 67% voted that they were in support of the junior doctors on strike.
David Cameron told ITV News: “It’s the wrong thing to do to go ahead with this strike, and particularly to go ahead with the withdrawal of emergency care – that is not right”.
But junior doctors maintain the new contracts will compromise patient safety.
On Tuesday night Mr Hunt, who has admitted that being health secretary is probably his “last big job in politics”, said the BMA had not been prepared to negotiate.
“It’s under threat from a government that’s more interested in attacking the core of the NHS – namely the junior doctors and all that work with them – than supporting the NHS and people that keep us all alive”, Corbyn said.
Both NHS England and London Ambulance Service said they were unaware of additional pressures during the first hours of the strike.
Around 400 junior doctors – all doctors below consultant level – picketed outside Leeds General Infirmary’s Jubilee and Brotherton wings earlier today, with the latter spilling out into Millennium Square.
The strike is the first time junior doctors have withdrawn full labour, including emergency care, which has been mostly provided by their more senior consultant colleagues. “We offered a simple choice – lift imposition and the strikes would be called off, but unfortunately the health secretary simply refuses to do that”.
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The NHS has created a special page for patients to help understand how to plan around the strikes as well as get local information on how the strike affects services near you.
