Striking junior doctors form picket line at Worcestershire Royal Hospital

“I remember the quality of care patients got from me when I’d been up 72 hours”.

On Wednesday February 10, there will be a full withdrawal of labour from 8am to 5pm.

The BMA said doctors in Sandwell should continue to strike until further notice.

The British government wanted to establish a “seven-day National Health Service (NHS)” and proposed to introduce a new work contract for junior doctors, who believe the new contract would reduce protections for them.

A spokesman for the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) has announced that talks between the Government and the British Medical Association (BMA) would resume on Thursday at 10am, continuing on Friday.

“The government have shown that they are quite happy to remove any safeguards against the length of hours junior doctors work and this, I can see, will lead rapidly to people working very long hours and exhausted doctors make mistakes”.

Thousands of appointments and operations were postponed or cancelled, however junior doctors continued to provide emergency care throughout the day.

This will be followed by two further spells of strike action, with a 48-hour stoppage and the provision of emergency care only from 8am on Tuesday January 26.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has described the walkout as a “completely unnecessary dispute” and called on the BMA to re-enter negotiations with the Government.

Johann Malawana, chair of the BMA junior doctors committee, said: “Junior doctors feel they have been left with no option but to take this action”.

Waving banners saying “The NHS needs saving and they’re not listening but we’ve got something to say”, demonstrators formed picket lines outside hospitals beginning in the early morning. “We will do everything we can to mitigate its effects but you cannot have a strike on this scale in our NHS without real difficulties for patients and potentially worse”.

Hospitals in England are facing major disruption as junior doctors have gone on strike in a dispute with the government over a new contract. Patients have been advised that if the strike does not go ahead then they should attend their appointment as normal.

“It’s no secret that most of us will be on the picket lines”.

Junior doctor David Restall, who is now based at Chesterfield Royal, said: “The thing that we are most adverse to is that these plans will have a huge impact on us and this will not be safe for our patients”.