Biggest doctor’s strike in NHS history to cause mass chaos

Junior doctors will be providing emergency cover only throughout the day and contingency plans have been drawn up to minimise disruption for patients.

A doctor’s primary duty of care is to look after patients, and to go on strike seemingly contradicts this basic principle. The Government and the BMA are well aware of the serious impact a full strike could have.

Under the Government’s offer, junior doctors would receive time-and-a-half for any hours worked Monday to Sunday between 10pm and 7am, and time-and-a-third for any hours worked between 7pm and 10pm on Saturdays and 7am and 10pm on Sundays.

Stressful and tiring working conditions were causing demoralisation within the NHS, and pushing more doctors towards looking for work in other countries, Zafrani said.

NHS England said only 39 percent of a possible 26,000 junior doctors reported for work Tuesday, and that more than 3,400 procedures had to be postponed.

Jeremy Hunt, the Secretary of State for Health as well as the MP for Godalming, who has threatened to impose the new contract if agreement can not be reached, said that the strike was unnecessary.

Hundreds of city medics took part in the 24-hour walkout on Tuesday in a national dispute over a new contract. In a Facebook message he wrote: “Everybody in Britain recognizes and is grateful for the hard work and long hours put in by junior doctors”.

Placard-waving doctors surrounded every major hospital in Yorkshire on Tuesday to show their discontent over Government’s proposed changes to their working contracts, which the BMA sees as “unsafe and unfair”.

Opposition Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn voiced support for the junior doctors, saying in a statement: “Their treatment by this government has been nothing short of appalling”.

The second one, which is supposed to take place next month, would be a complete walkout – so juniors doctors wouldn’t even step in to provide emergency care if it was needed. The doctors were due to provide only emergency care for 24 hours from 0800 GMT, followed by a similar 48-hour stoppage starting January 26.

“We have been clear throughout this process that we want to negotiate a contract that is safe and fair, and delivers for junior doctors, patients and the NHS as whole”, the chairman of the BMA junior doctors committee, Johann Malawana, said in a statement.

The parody ends with the line: “We need to strike, yeah we have to fight this battle so we can win the war”.