How damaging will this junior doctors’ strike be?

Across England, around 50,000 junior doctors are currently taking part in industrial action over a long-standing pay dispute. The doctors’ union, the British Medical Association (BMA), has calculated that junior doctors have watched their wages fall by 26 per cent in real terms since 2008. Now, they are striking for pay restoration of 35 per cent to compensate for 15 years of below-inflation wage increases. 

Predicted to be the ‘most disruptive’ strike to hit the NHS so far, the four-day walkout has been condemned by senior health service officials for the high risk of ‘real harms’ it will cause by putting patient care ‘on a knife edge’. Hospital leaders have admitted they are ‘more concerned about clinical safety than at any time during Covid surges’. As this bout of industrial action is taking place during the Easter school holidays, health bosses have raised concerns about added difficulties in finding consultants to cover, particularly for night shifts.