JUNIOR doctors in Worcestershire look set to stage further industrial action as the row over a controversial contract for junior doctors continues.
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A spokesman said: “We are acutely aware that the NHS is under extreme pressure at the moment”.
“They are representing all of us in their desire for an effective, good NHS that works for all. I think the public mood is probably shifting a little bit further away from the doctors now because it is not clear why the strikes are continuing when a deal was done at an earlier point”.
He said: “And crucially where has Jeremy Corbyn, our Jeremy, been in putting on the table some substantive solution as opposed to simply playing politics”.
But the government said in July it would impose the new contract in October after junior doctors voted to reject the proposed deal. “That, to me, is playing politics”, he said.
Speaking of which, recent NHS leaks show “workforce overload” is a major internal concern about Hunt’s promised “truly seven-day NHS” without extra funding or staff.
The strike will have an enormous impact on health services, with an estimated “30,000 operations and a quarter of a million out-patient appointments” needing to be cancelled, says the Daily Telegraph.
It was previously thought a breakthrough had been reached between both sides in the dispute after a new deal was agreed in May.
There have been five previous walkouts in the dispute, all this year.
Mr Dickson said they “recognised the frustration and alienation of doctors in training and their right to take industrial action”.
“Patient safety and quality of care must be the priority”.
Hospital managers will have less time to prepare contingency plans to deal with this month’s walkout than they did when junior doctors last held industrial action in April.
Deep divisions among doctors’ leaders were revealed today as Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt accused them of inflicting “the worst doctors’ strike in NHS history” on patients.
“Given the intransigence of the Government, this decision was always likely”, she said.
“The NHS is only as strong as the morale of its staff”.
British health officials are bracing for an unprecedented five-day junior doctors strike announced for mid-September.
“If Theresa May was serious about prioritising the NHS she would be working to solve this dispute and properly fund our National Health Service”. Defending his own unpopularity, Hunt said: “Nye Bevan, the founder of the NHS, was described by the BMA (British Medical Association) as a “medical Fuhrer”. But they have been driven to it by ministers forcing through changes which put the entire health service at risk.
“Combine winter pressures with an already stretched NHS, alongside a series of extended strike action and it will nearly certainly result in a NHS crisis”. We should be capable of better than this.
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Earlier Mr Hunt was told by Sky News host Eamonn Holmes he was seen as “toxic” and “part of the problem”.
