Junior doctors representatives will resume negotiations with the Department of Health and NHS Employers in a bid to avert two days of further strike action planned in a dispute over new contract terms.
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“As junior doctors we work hard, we work unsociable hours and we work weekends… staying behind after work to make sure things are safe”.
A 27-year-old woman – who wished to remain anonymous – who has been a junior doctor for three years said: “If they are not bringing in any more doctors than the service will be more thinly spread than it already us”.
It comes after thousands of juniors nationwide returned to work this morning after a 24-hour period of reduced “emergency care only” staffing that ended at 8am following the cancellation of 4,000 planned operations nationwide.
Trainees also staged local Meet the Doctor engagement events in Yorkshire, while some even helped in the Leeds flood relief effort by clearing warehouses in Kirkstall hit by Storm Eva.
The Government says the changes to the contract are needed to provide a 24/7 NHS. “We want to settle this but it was a very unnecessary strike”.
Talks ahead of the first junior doctors’ strikes in 40 years on Tuesday were claimed by the NHS to have seen significant progress.
Mr Mortimer told the BBC: “I’m really hopeful that when the BMA return to the talks we can give junior doctors more confidence in both the pay offer that we’re putting to them, but also the improved protections we want to put in place around their safety”.
The doctors’ union – The British Medical Association (BMA) – say there are 53,000 junior doctors in England.
Those who manned picket lines outside Leicester Royal Infirmary, Leicester General and Glenfield Hospitals said they felt the day of action had gone well.
Junior doctors are qualified medical practitioners.
This could then be followed by a full withdrawal of labour from 8am until 5pm on February 10.
She added: “Patient care is at the centre of what we do but this strike has been known about”. We just need everybody to get back round the table and resolve this.
“We have tried and tested plans to deal with a range of disruptions including industrial action”, Anne Rainsberry, from NHS England, said. The BMA is concerned about pay for weekend working, career progression and safeguards to protect doctors from being over-worked.
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Meanwhile, the BMA said it was open to getting talks started.
