Junior doctors’ strikes: it’s time to stop the walkouts and start negotiations

• Published in: BMJ (Online) 2023-04, Vol.381, p.813-813
• Main Author: Mir, Fraz A
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Emergency medical care; Humans; Medical profession; Medical Staff, Hospital; Negotiating; Opinion; Riots; Strikes, Employee
• ISSN: 1756-1833; 1756-1833
• DOI: 10.1136/bmj.p813

The current industrial action is on a scale not seen before.1 The strikes starting today—scheduled for four days straight and immediately after the Easter bank holiday weekend—are designed to cause maximum disruption and inconvenience to an already overstretched health and social care system. Junior doctors are also asking for full restoration for pay that has been eroded over 15 years of below inflation pay rises.2 While it is right to blame the government for these myriad of failings, one wonders if we might have avoided this situation had we seen stronger leadership much sooner from the medical Royal Colleges, Health Education England, and even the General Medical Council (GMC) and the BMA itself, by advocating on behalf of junior doctors more vociferously and calling out the scale of the crisis in the NHS. [...]that does not mean that senior doctors have to agree with junior doctors’ decision to take industrial action.8 The next four days of strike action are predicted to lead to massive disruption, with up to 40% of the medical workforce absent and over quarter of a million procedures, operations, or appointments having to be rearranged in a system that is already struggling with delays and backlogs from the pandemic.9 It would be naïve to think that the industrial action will not endanger patients or compromise their safety.10 Whatever damage government policies may do in the medium to long stretch, the strikes will lead to hardship for thousands of patients in the short term.