Junior doctors in England’s National Health Service staged their first ever all-out strike on Tuesday (April 26), walking out on both emergency and routine care.
They are locked in an increasingly bitter dispute with the government and Health Minister Jeremy Hunt’s threat to impose a new contract on them.
Talks have broken down in the row over working hours and pay, with the main sticking point payment for weekend work.
A government source told the BBC that the junior doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA) was trying to topple the government and had radicalised “a generation of junior doctors”.
That claim was rejected by the striking doctors on a picket line outside London’s St Thomas’ Hospital.
“The risk is that Jeremy Hunt will create a generation of junior doctors who are suspicious of the politicians and that will harm the necessary interaction that we have with the Department of Health and I think that is a real risk. The idea that we have become radicalised, you know, left-wingers is absolute nonsense and I think the less inflammatory talk like that that we have, the better really,” said James Crane.
Junior doctor Nicola Miller said: “It’s not in our interests to go out there and try and topple governments or try and take over and be all powerful.”
“Jeremy Hunt has never been on the frontline, he has never worked in a hospital, he’s got no idea how to run a hospital and yet he comes out with these ridiculous assertions and ideas,” she added.
Nearly 13,000 routine operations and more than 100,000 appointments have been cancelled. Consultants have been drafted in to take over emergency and maternity care.
Several walkouts have already taken place this year, but this is the first all-out action.
An Ipsos-MORI poll found that public support for the striking junior doctors remains high, at 57 percent.
There is deep frustration among the doctors that Hunt refuses to budge on his plan to impose the new contract on the junior doctors in the summer.
“I just think there is a pervasive feeling of being quite downtrodden. There’s lots of different feelings I think, but probably one of hopelessness perhaps,” said striker Charlotte Warren.
Tuesday’s strike runs from 0800-1700bst (0700-1600gmt). Another 8-hour total walkout will take place at the same times on Wednesday (April 27).
Reuters