Hundreds of thousands of operations and medical appointments will be cancelled in England next month and progress in tackling the huge care backlog will be derailed as the NHS prepares to face the most widespread industrial action in its history.
Junior doctors are poised to join nurses and ambulance workers in mass continuous walkouts in March after members of the British Medical Association (BMA) voted overwhelmingly to take industrial action.
In only the second such action in the 74-year-history of the NHS, junior doctors will walk out for 72 hours – continuously across three days, on dates yet to be confirmed – after 98% of those who voted favoured strike action.
Amid an increasingly bitter row between health unions and the government, NHS leaders expressed alarm at the enormous disruption now expected next month, which senior figures told the Guardian would make the strikes staged so far look like “peanuts”.
More than 140,000 surgeries and appointments have already been lost as a result of walkouts by health workers since the end of last year, and that figure will be dwarfed by next month’s action.
Junior doctors who are members of the Hospital Consultants and Specialists Association (HCSA) will also strike for the first time in their union’s history, on 15 March.
Tens of thousands of nurses in England, including in cancer wards, A&E departments and intensive care units will stop work for 48 hours – the longest continuous action in nursing history – from 1 March. Ambulance staff in England and Wales will strike on 6 March and 20 March.
The health secretary, Steve Barclay, said he was “deeply disappointed” with the BMA ballot result. NHS bosses said the government could resolve the dispute by opening talks on current pay rates.
“While we wait for the BMA to confirm the exact date of this walkout, it remains in the government’s gift to bring this spiralling disruption to an immediate end by talking to the unions about pay for this financial year,” said Saffron Cordery, the deputy chief executive of NHS Providers.
“An unprecedented 72-hour strike next month is extremely worrying as the NHS battles to cope with the effects of the most widespread industrial action in its history, soon to include a 48-hour walkout by nurses from 1 March. Leaders across the NHS are deeply concerned about the impact this will have on their ability to deliver care, especially as hospitals will now be left without emergency cover by junior doctors for three days straight.
“More than 140,000 appointments have already been postponed due to industrial action. This figure will rise significantly with the ramping up of walkouts from nurses, ambulance staff, and now junior doctors. An urgent resolution is needed if we are to prevent harm to patients and the NHS.”
Cordery said hospital bosses would do everything they could to mitigate the impact of the strikes, but warned that disruption was inevitable and would probably “hamper efforts to tackle care backlogs and meet elective targets”.
“Nobody wants this. But burnt-out frontline staff feel they’ve been pushed to this point by challenges including the rising cost of living, below-inflation pay and vast workforce shortages,” she added.
Matthew Taylor, the chief executive of the NHS Confederation, said the action planned for next month was a “major blow” and would be “hugely disruptive and worrying” for thousands of patients.
“When junior doctors last went on strike in 2016, hospitals had to cancel nearly 300,000 outpatient appointments, thousands of elective procedures had to be postponed, and many were also not scheduled on these days in anticipation,” he said.
“What is perhaps most worrying is that the 72-hour walkout is the BMA’s starting position and that it has said emergency care will not be excluded. If the government continues not to budge, the next stage of industrial action does not bear thinking about.”
Almost 37,000 votes were cast from 47,000 eligible to vote, meaning it was the largest ever turnout for a ballot by the BMA, with a record number of junior doctors voting for stoppages.
“This vote shows, without a shadow of a doubt, the strength of feeling among most of England’s junior doctors,” the BMA junior doctors committee co-chairs Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi said in a joint statement.
“The government has only itself to blame, standing by in silent indifference as our members are forced to take this difficult decision. We are frustrated, in despair and angry and we have voted in our thousands to say, ‘in the name of our profession, our patients, and our NHS, doctors won’t take it any more.”
Barclay said he valued the work of junior doctors and wanted “to continue discussing how we can make the NHS a better place to work for all”.
