The strike of resident doctors will throw the NHS into disturbance, health leaders have warned as the five-day walkout begins on Friday.
At the last minute, Sir Keir Stormmer appealed to doctors to ward off industrial action and said the strikes would put patients at risk and warned that wider the public “does not support these strikes”.
The NHS Hospitals face the first day of a five-day walkout from resident doctors, and health officials have said that the British medical association is responsible for the distress caused by patients. Residential doctors will arrange a five-day walkout from Friday 25 July to Wednesday.
Sir Keir wrote in The times That the strikes threatened to “turn the clock back on progress, we have made to rebuild the NHS” and that they could influence the recovery of health care.
He said, “The route that the BMA resident’s doctor’s committee has chosen will mean that everyone loses. My appeal to resident doctors is this: Do not follow the BMA management down this harmful path. Our NHS and your patients need you.”
The Prime Minister added, “Most people do not support these strikes. They know they will cause real harm.”
“Behind the headlines are the patients whose lives will be destroyed by this decision. The frustration and disappointment of the necessary treatment is delayed. And worse, late diagnoses and care that risk their long -term health.
“It’s not fair to patients. It’s not fair to NHS staff who have to step in to get cover for those who intervene. And it’s not fair to taxpayers.
When he spoke ahead of resident doctors who begin five days of strike, said Rory Deighton, emergency director and social care at NHS Confederation, representing hospitals, “NHS and patients are stiffened in five disturbing days of strike actions.
“While our members will try to keep as much activity as possible as possible, there is no doubt that this industrial act will have an impact on some services.”
He said the strikes were not “inevitable” after the government entered into negotiations with BMA in “good faith”.
“But despite the fact that medical members who received some of the largest wage increases throughout the public sector decided, the resident’s doctors’ committee decided to throw NHS and patients into disturbance. The impact of these strikes and the distress they will cause patients to rest with BMA,” he said.
The independent Understand that some large hospitals in specialties may need to cancel up to 25 to 50 percent of their patient appointments.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said ahead of the strikes on Friday: “The truth is that patients and NHS staff did not need to be in this position today.
“Despite a pay rise of 28.9 percent for their members in the last three years, and constructive conversations about a number of measures to improve working life for resident doctors, the BMA management chose to go away from conversations and put the damage at the NHS’s door.
“There is nothing that these strikes will hit the progress we make by turning the NHS. But I am determined to keep the disturbance for patients to a minimum and continue with the improvement we have begun to deliver in the last 12 months after one and a half decade of neglect. We are not knocked outside the course.”
BMA residents’ committee committee chairman Dr. Melissa Ryan and Dr. Ross Nieuwoudt claimed that doctors assistants can be paid up to 30 percent more than a resident doctor who was “deeply unreasonable.”
The Union claimed ads for doctors ‘assistants’ jobs would see them take £ 24 per hour home. While ads recently qualified resident doctors amounted to £ 18.62.
It said the annual salary for a medical assistant working on 37.5-hour week is £ 47,810 or £ 24.45 per hour, while a foundation year one-meter’s starting salary is £ 38,831 or £ 18.62 per hour.
The salary specified by BMA is basic salary and does not include additional earnings or working hours.
The statement added that during lectures over the past week, the Health Secretary failed to address doctors’ salary of 21 percent between 2008 and 2025.
It added: “The Health Secretary and his officials have refused to continue the negotiations on the strike days despite the committee’s willingness to do so. The resident doctors’ committees reject overwhelming what did not constitute nothing but vague promises of non-salary questions in a letter to those from Mr. Streeting.”
The Union said it wants the current strikes to be the last and called on Mr. Streeting “to get back around the table with a serious suggestion.”
However, DHSC claimed that the Union’s’ framing of the wage rates was “uncomfortable.”
It said, “Given their repeated use of debunked ways of measuring inflation to exaggerate their wage requirements, it follows a pattern of deliberately misleading calculations from BMA.”
DHSC said that the average annual earnings per First year Resident Doctor Last year was £ 43,275, in their second year on average £ 52,300 last year, and resident doctors in special training earned an average of almost £ 75,000.