The imminent strikes by the BMA resident doctors pose a moment of sadness. It is sad for patients and sad for the NHS.
We are in the economic equivalent of a Covid crisis in the NHS; if the proposed reforms aren’t delivered, it will be an existential crisis for our health system. I do not say that at all lightly, but I do say it from decades of knowledge and experience.
It is a relief that reforms are already starting to see things moving in the right direction, but this action will choke off that recovery and put the NHS in a perilous place.
I was a GP for 29 years. It is a privilege to be a clinician and share people’s lives at difficult moments. It is our professional duty to put the people we care for before ourselves.
Last year’s (and this year’s) pay award amounts to a 28.9 per cent increase for resident doctors compared with three years ago. It is what many other people dream of, not to mention the almost unique index-linked NHS pensions.
It cannot have been easy to persuade the Treasury to pay out in such resource-constrained times. Having pocketed that, the resident doctors now need to accept that there is no more money for pay – reform has to have priority.
That said, there are valid issues to be sorted out in training, allocation to jobs, and working conditions. It isn’t right that resident doctors can be randomly allocated to posts, disrupting lives, or find the catering arrangements totally inadequate when on call.
However, the NHS 10-year plan contains within it a pledge to deal with such matters with speed. So, I just don’t understand the call for a strike. It is disproportionate when there is such an open door.
Without getting too Monty Python, as a junior doctor, I did one in two or one in three “on calls”, which meant working the days and also working through every other night (or third night) with time beyond 40 hours paid at a third of our normal rate.
It was brutal, but our representatives worked to make things better – and from this, the current generation benefits. We wouldn’t ever have considered taking action against our patients.
And this action is against patients. The resident doctors may be worried about their futures, but so is every patient who now might not be treated.
Polls suggest patients do not agree with the resident doctors. I hope the public supports the NHS and opposes the resident doctors this time. I hope resident doctors support the NHS – and not their leaders.
The proposed action will further erode trust by people in the NHS. It is already at an all-time low, and the consent of the nation to use 40 per cent of departmental spend on a poorly performing healthcare system is unlikely to continue without improvement.
This resident doctors’ action almost guarantees the end of the NHS if they continue, playing into the hands of those who want to have a different healthcare system.
This action is the industrial relations equivalent of the charge of the Light Brigade. The resident doctors should remember the spirit of the Hippocratic oath; first, do no harm.
Sir John Oldham was a GP for 29 years and is now a senior adviser to Wes Streeting
