A six-day walkout by thousands of British doctors over salaries started on Wednesday, and it was predicted to be the longest in the National Health Service’s history, which is funded by public funds. Patients’ appointments were cancelled as a result.
IN LONDON
London – Thousands of British physicians began a six-day walkout on Wednesday over wages, which was expected to be the longest in the history of the publicly financed National Health Service. As a result, patients had their appointments cancelled.
Tens of thousands of appointments and procedures are expected to be delayed, according to managers, as a result of junior doctors in their early years of practice walking out across England. The physicians, who provide the majority of care in hospitals and clinics, want to take Tuesday off from work until seven in the morning.
Senior physicians and other medical professionals have been called upon to cover maternity, critical care, and emergency services.
ACCORDING TO JULIAN HARTLEY, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF HEALTH CARE MANAGER, ORGANISATION NHS PROVIDER
The strike occurred “immediately after the Christmas and New Year period because of the pressures and demands, and of course we’ve got flu, we’ve got COVID,” said this was one of the hardest times of the year for the health service.
“So there’s going to be an impact on patients that will be significant,” he stated.
A year of continuous strikes in the UK’s health sector resulted from employees’ demands for wage increases to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living. Unions claim that over the past ten years, earnings have actually decreased, particularly in the public sector. Additionally, double-digit inflation in late 2022 and early 2023, driven by drastically rising food and energy prices, left many workers unable to pay their bills.
WAGES
Although the U.K. minimum wage is slightly over 10 pounds per hour, the union claims that newly certified doctors make 15.53 pounds ($19.37) per hour, though earnings grow quickly after the first year.
Dr. Georgia Blackwell, 28, claimed on a picket line outside St. Thomas’ Hospital in central London that many doctors were choosing to work abroad due to stress and inadequate compensation.
“A lot of doctors are moving to Australia – not just because of the pay, but also the work-life balance is better,” she stated.
The health system, which is already overburdened and battling to clear backlogs brought on by the coronavirus outbreak, has been put under pressure by the walkouts.
Over 1.2 million appointments have been rescheduled in the months since the wave of industrial action started, according to Health Secretary Victoria Atkins, who warned that the strikes were having “a serious impact on patients.”
Measuring the impact is a challenging task. Some argue that a spike in excess deaths in the United Kingdom in 2023—the largest number since the pandemic year of 2020—may be caused by delays in testing and treatment brought on by the strikes.
Though there is some indication that COVID-19 and an ageing population are linked to a spike in deaths in the UK and other nations, there isn’t much concrete proof of a connection
COMPENSATION
The government has achieved compensation agreements with nurses, ambulance drivers, and senior doctors; however, the junior doctor’s union has refused to budge, and talks ended in the latter part of last year. The British Medical Association, the union representing physicians, says it will not engage in negotiations unless it receives a “credible” offer of compensation. Meanwhile, the government says it will not undertake any more talks until doctors end their walkout.
The doctors received an 8.8% wage increase from the government last year, but the union claims this is insufficient given young doctors’ compensation has decreased by more than 25% since 2008.
“The idea that we’re obsessed with calling strikes and that’s all we want is not what we want,” stated Dr. Vivek Trivedi, who is also the co-chair of the Junior Doctors Committee of the British Medical Association. “What we want is to negotiate an offer we can put to our members and for our members to accept it.”
