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+--- Thread: NHS predicts difficult January as doctors set for longest strike yet (healing style) (/thread-15206.html)
NHS predicts difficult January as doctors set for longest strike yet (healing style) - C C - Jan 3, 2024
(UK) NHS England predicts ‘most difficult January ever’ as junior doctors set for longest strike yet
https://leftfootforward.org/2024/01/nhs-england-predicts-most-difficult-january-ever-as-junior-doctors-set-for-longest-strike-yet/
EXCERPTS: NHS England has warned today that this week could see “one of the most difficult starts to the year ever” as junior doctors in England are set to enter the longest strike in NHS history on Wednesday.
The warning comes as covid, flu and staff sickness absence add to seasonal pressures on the NHS during one of the busiest periods for the healthcare system.
Junior doctors have been forced back onto the picket lines in their long-running dispute with the government for pay restoration, demanding a reverse to the 26% real terms pay cut they have seen since 2008/09.
From 7am on Wednesday 3 January, to 9am on 9 January junior doctors in England will take 114 continuous hours of industrial action, the longest in NHS history. The British Medical Association (BMA) continues to urge the government to provide a credible offer it can put to members, and end the strikes.
[...] Dr Julia Grace Patterson from the organisation EveryDoctor, which fights for the future of the NHS, commented on the lack of accountability politicians receive over the current state of health services.
“It’s extraordinary to see the degree of coverage about how terrible junior doctor strikes are, and the absolute lack of coverage about the impact politicians have had upon our NHS and the working conditions of healthcare staff,” Dr Patterson said on X.
A recent study found two in three UK doctors suffered from ‘moral distress’ due to an overstretched NHS and lack of resources taking a toll on medics’ wellbeing.
One NHS doctor wrote on X: “The medical workforce is burned-out, quietly quitting & feels totally undervalued after more than a decade of pay cuts. Make a real offer of pay restoration to end the strikes so that we can rebuild our profession & the NHS.” (MORE - missing details)
(UK) A strike to shatter the idea medics are deified protectors of the 'sacred' NHS
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12920495/IAN-BIRRELL-strike-shatter-idea-medics-deified-protectors-sacred-NHS.html
INTRO: A profession that pledges, ‘First, do no harm’ should have ethical qualms about risking patients’ welfare. But last year, the National Health Service was plagued by corrosive industrial actions – and now this selfish six-day walkout by junior doctors demanding a 35 per cent pay rise is the longest continuous strike in its history.
Even Matthew Taylor, a former Labour apparatchik who heads the NHS Confederation, says the ill-timed action leaves the NHS ‘skating on very thin ice’ amid surging winter infections, rising Covid cases and millions of patients stuck on waiting lists.
The British Medical Association (BMA), of course, insists patient safety is its top priority. But Vivek Trivedi, co-chairman of its junior doctors committee, says they are not prepared to be ‘taken for a ride any more’ and must be ‘willing to stand up for ourselves.’ Yet no-one should be fooled by such self-righteous rhetoric from activist medics.
Not just because the core claim of these junior doctors about their declining pay levels has been crushed by the influential Institute for Fiscal Studies, which argues that their pay has fallen by 11 to 16 per cent since 2010. A drop yes, but much less than the 26 per cent since 2008/2009 that they claim they have suffered... (MORE - details)