Thousands of patients face being stuck in hospital over Christmas as junior doctors embark on the most disruptive walkout in NHS history.
Junior medics will begin a three-day walkout from 7 am today and will return on Saturday before embarking on a mammoth six-day stoppage from January 3.
Health leaders said the action, which has already forced one A&E to close, leaves patients safety in a ‘precarious state’ at the busiest time of the year.
They warned that patients are the ones being left to pick up the pieces of this dispute with yet more operations and appointments cancelled.
Rishi Sunak told the Commons Liaison Committee that the question for the junior doctors is as to why they’re refusing to accept something that everyone else is now accepting, on top of having a pay increase which is more generous than anyone else’s set by the independent body going into this.
Nurses, physiotherapists and paramedics have all called off action following pay talks, while consultants are to vote on an offer their leaders have accepted.
However, junior doctors rejected an additional three per cent pay increase on top of an average 8.8 per cent pay rise for 2023-24.
The stalemate has resulted in the latest strikes, which caused Cheltenham A&E to close last night until Saturday. Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said no minor injury and illness unit services would be provided, and that it would restrict treatment over Christmas and New Year.
Hospitals have been gearing up to discharge healthier patients sooner, with NHS chief Amanda Pritchard admitting that reduced staffing caused by the doctors’ strikes slows down discharges.
About 13,000 people a day who are considered medically well enough to leave the hospital were stuck on wards, mainly due to limited social care and community service capacity. However, NHS data shows the number discharged from hospitals fell in the last period of industrial action.
Julian Hartley, chief executive of NHS Providers, said that trusts were doing everything they could to enable people to get home as soon as they were well enough but the strikes were bound to have an impact.
Caroline Abrahams, charity director at Age UK, said it was ‘so sad’ elderly patients in particular could remain in hospital unnecessarily over Christmas.
Experts said the impact on services would be long-lasting and could jeopardise efforts to tackle waiting lists.
If doctors are not willing to put their patients before themselves, then they choose the wrong profession to be in. What happened to caring, that went out of the window? The problem is, that healthcare is all about money now.
These doctors don’t work all hours for peanuts, they get a rather fair wage. Some nurses work longer hours for less money.
So much for the caring profession. They simply care for nobody but themselves and the money in their pockets.
The medical profession is appalling. These doctors knew what they were signing up for when they entered the profession. It’s time these walkouts were prohibited, and how can these doctors go home at night and sleep soundly when someone in the hospital could be dying because they’re on strike?
Care in the medical profession is at an all-time low, and the wrong kind of people are being trained as doctors as they support money over patients.
We clapped our hands for the NHS staff, well they can stick that where the sun doesn’t shine. We want an NHS that values and can retain doctors and nurses, otherwise our healthcare in the future is finished!
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 