News / Health
Resident doctors begin latest strike action
Resident doctors formed a picket line outside the main entrance to the BRI on Wednesday morning on the first day of their planned five-day walkout.
Strike action has been called after resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, rejected a revised government offer.
The British Medical Association (BMA) say that resident doctors “won’t back down until the government wakes up to the scale of the crisis over pay and lack of specialty training places”.
Dr Sam Taylor-Smith, a trainee psychiatrist and BMA representative, was among those on the picket line on Upper Maudlin Street.
“Despite some misleading headlines, when you look at the offer, the supposed 4,000 additional new jobs are actually just repurposed jobs that already exist,” said Taylor-Smith.
“So what we’re effectively seeing is rearranging deck chairs on a sinking ship.
“Our members understandably don’t think that’s good enough.
“We know that there aren’t enough doctors on the shop floor. This is having an impact on patient care.
“And so we’re back out here on strike again to show that their offer is not acceptable to us.”
At prime minister’s question time on Wednesday, Keir Starmer called the strikes “dangerous and utterly irresponsible”.
Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch had called for the government to ban strikes by doctors.
Main photo: Martin Booth
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