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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Politics
Haroon Siddique

Junior doctors strike for third time over new contract - as it happened

Junior doctors join 48-hour strike – video

Summary

As most of the pickets are winding up, we’re going to close the blog now. Thanks for reading and for all the comments.

  • Junior doctors walked out at 8am this morning to begin a 48 hours strike over the terms of a new contract.
  • The BMA said there were 147 picket lines across England. The GMB and Unite unions were present at some of the pickets.
  • An Ipsos MORI for the BBC showed 65% support junior doctors going on strike, with 57% of people blaming the government for the dispute.
  • Some striking doctors have been running free lifesaving classes for parents, while others gave blood.

There appears to be far flung support for the industrial action.

On Whitechapel Road, outside the Royal London hospital, doctors of a wide variety of backgrounds on strike gathered with creative signs and picket biscuits and stood with clipboards to gauge the reaction of the public. Junior doctors stood at the kerb of the busy road with a megaphone, jumped and chanted “save our NHS”. Cars, white vans, delivery trucks, and even buses beeped support.

A cyclist rang his bell is support as he rode past, and an elderly man with a flat cap said: “Good luck guys”.

Hannah Gordon held her placard that her two young children helped to decorate. The experienced registrar said when on call she was so busy she didn’t even have time to use the toilet.

Junior doctors told the Guardian what they want to say to the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, in this video:

In this video Hannah Barham-Brown says an appointment she has been waiting for six months for an appointment for a condition which means she’s in pain most of the time was cancelled, but she is not angry that the junior doctors are striking.

I’m actually very grateful to them because I know that the main reason they’re going on strike is to protect the safety and the care of patients like me. I’m also really grateful that they’re going out on strike because I’m about to qualify as a junior doctor ...In the last eight years and all of that training time I have taken a total of three weeks off ...three weeks [despite] the death of two siblings and the development of a disability and that’s all I have taken away from the NHS in order to recover so I could do my job better.

She describes the contract Jeremy Hunt is imposing as “utterly terrifying for my professional future”.

Junior doctors perform a somewhat out of tune version of With a Little Help from My Friends:

As well as picketing, striking junior doctors are doing other things with their time today.

There are around 25 free lifesaving for parents being held by junior doctors across England as part of an initiative called #littlelifesavers.

As on the days of previous strikes, some junior doctors are giving blood.

You know you’re getting old when your doctor is younger than you.

Rosalyn Roden, for the Guardian, has been talking to striking junior doctors outside the Royal Liverpool university hospital, where members of the Merseyside Pensioners Association, the GMB and Unite have shown up to show their solidarity.

A spokesman for the trust said they cancelled 20 appointments this morning.

Dr Aaron Borbora, deputy chair of the BMA junior doctors committee, and radiology registrar at Leighton hospital, in Crewe, said:

I think the first stage is we need to be treated as a valued part of the team. And allow us to care for the patients in the best way possible. The government needs to stop mistreating us and talk to us in a sensible way.

None of us want to take strike action. It is not something we have come to lightly. We don’t feel that we have any other option.

I have sat down with the government so I have lived and breathed this for the last few months. The best hope of change is if the government withdraws imposition and starts to address our concerns seriously.

Updated

Kailash Chand, deputy chair of the BMA, has written for the Guardian’s Healthcare network, accusing Jeremy Hunt of “misusing statistics as a way to impose the new junior doctor contract”. The health secretary, he says, would be in front of a fitness to practise tribunal if he were a medic.

Chand writes:

Hunt has managed to insult and alienate NHS staff across the board. To lose a large swath of junior doctors in the early stages of their careers would be a disaster for the NHS. And the number of GPs and consultants who are considering retiring early is staggeringly high and a huge worry for the NHS and patient care. The health service could be left with a shortage of clinicians, with the remaining doctors spread too thinly. We will have fewer staff in an even less safe NHS.

Junior doctors in East London are in high spirits but adamant they must win against the health secretary Jeremy Hunt on the contracts issue. They pounded the pavement in Whitechapel handing out leaflets to passersby.

Jackie Applebee is a GP and has been active in support of the junior doctors strike. She said:

I think it’s really important they win this dispute. It’s outrageous the government is implying it’s a pay rise when the number of unsocial hours is going up.

Applebee said Saturdays will be treated like a Wednesday and added the problem was that “the safety mechanisms are going to be relaxed”.

“There is a workforce shortage and so more rotated and more tired,” she said.

She said she was fearful the clocks would be turned back for junior doctors to how it was for her when she was a junior doctor in the late 1980s.

It was usual to do Monday to Friday and often doctors spent every third night on call. If you were on call on the weekend you would be covering from a normal day on Friday until the end of a normal day on Monday.

There was very little sleep while on obstetrics - there could be a beep anytime.

Applebee said she often did a 100 hour week and feared current doctors will face the same.

I remember how tired I would be and we risk going back to that.

There’s a workforce crisis and doctors are going to Australia and GPs are retiring and people aren’t going into this field.

Who will look after us? The public need to understand this. The message to the public is the government is doing this to junior doctors and if they win they will do he same to nurses and GPs, going towards a system like (the United States of) America while America is moving away from the system.

We are throwing the baby out with the bathwater and we’ll end up with a two tiered NHS.

Standing in the rain in his scrubs, Edward, who has been a paediatrician for eleven years, said it would soon be time to escalate action. “We have to win” he said.

Dr Ros Kings, on the picket line outside Chelsea and Westminster, told Philip Mansell that Jeremy Hunt should negotiate further with the BMA.

She said:

Junior doctors are vulnerable because of our yearly contract. If this contract is imposed it could be used as a lever and it could have a knock on affect on other roles in the NHS. There’s no opposition to a seven-day NHS if it’s thought through and staffed properly.

Striking junior doctors in Bishop’s Stortford are running free CPR training sessions for the public today and tomorrow.

Junior doctor Zohra Qureshi told the Herts and Essex Observer:

We feel we still want to do something worthwhile even though we are not at our jobs.

We are not striking because we want a free day off, we are not being paid. We want to do something to raise the issue and to give something back to the community.

Here’s a video of junior doctors in east London.

Junior doctors outside the Royal London hospital chant “Save our NHS”.

A “blue light” candle lit vigil will be held outside Downing Street this evening from 8.30pm “to remind the government and public that the NHS is already 24/7”.

It has been organised by by Dr Julia Prague, a medical registrar in London who qualified eight years ago, to coincide with the strike. She said:

I organised this themed vigil because the NHS is already 24/7, providing high quality care at the point of entry, and despite this the NHS is being left out in the cold by the government: underfunded and undervalued in the face of political point scoring and game playing, which is demoralising doctors and other front line staff. Imposition of an unsafe and unfair contract will only make matters worse.”

Staff and patients will stand together, united at dark, from 8.30pm to 10.45pm, holding blue candle lights while the National Health Singers choir sings Yours, an anthem calling for protection of the NHS.

The strike in England – and the prospect of junior doctors leaving the UK for jobs abroad because of concerns over the new contract – may be an opportunity for health boards in Wales.

Doctors at the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Health Board – which covers Swansea, Port Talbot, Neath, Bridgend – have contributed to a video inviting professionals to re-locate to south Wales rather than New South Wales, in Australia.

They don’t focus on the strike but extol the virtues of the region: the lovely beaches, countryside, affordability and the job and training opportunities.

Here’s the video:

Doctors promote south Wales

So far it has been viewed 70,000 times since being launched on Friday.

The Labour-controlled Welsh government is, of course, more nakedly political. It has been keen to point out that there is no strike in Wales. At the end of last year it launched a recruitment drive pointedly aimed at disillusioned English trainees.

There were around 20 doctors at picket lines on different sides of the road outside King’s College hospital in Camberwell, south London, this morning.

They were listening to Sweet Alabama to keep up spirits.

In the walk-in blood test department it took just two minutes to see a nurse. “It seems less busy today at the moment,” one of the nurses said, adding “you did well” as they put a little bandage on my arm.

Striking junior doctors outside King’s College hospital, in Camberwell, south London
Striking junior doctors outside King’s College hospital, in Camberwell, south London Photograph: Mark Oliver for the Guardian

It’s a dog’s life being a junior doctor.

This tweet is from the chair of the BMA junior doctors committee.

This is a succinct summary of why the junior doctors are striking:

It’s no surprise to find veteran Labour MP Dennis Skinner, one of the hardest working politicians, on the picket line.

Philip Mansell, outside Chelsea and Westminster hospital for the Guardian, writes:

There’s been plenty of support from passersby and those filtering in and out of the hospital. One of the picketers, Dr Ieuan Reece, believes that there will be an outflux of staff from the NHS if the contracts are imposed, and already has medic friends who have applied to work in Australia.

There is support elsewhere for the junior doctors, whether it be from motorists, trade unions or others in the medical profession.

On this drizzly and grey March morning, a dozen doctors stood on the picket line at the London Royal Hospital, Whitechapel, in the East End. They wore orange hi-vis jackets and held aloft umbrellas as well-wishers passed around home-baked brownies.

Arjun Devanesan has been a junior doctor for five years, specialising in anaesthetics. He told the Guardian:

I’m here because i think that we’re sort of behind the times a little bit and the government had been sneaking up on us since 2012 social care act.

It’s not just about junior doctors but also saving NHS from imploding and becoming economically and socially unviable so that the only solution becomes privatisation. So it’s about stopping this.

Devanesan said that later this afternoon striking doctors from east London hospitals will be gathering at St Paul’s en masse to protest.

He added:

The thing with anaesthetics, is it gives departments cover for so many things and i already see gaps in the rotas filled as people aren’t applying for jobs and becoming even more stretched and becoming difficult to match the demand.

Applying for jobs becomes unattractive so a lot of people are going abroad, taking time out and changing industry.

I don’t think people really realise surgical lists overrun or are cancelled. It is because physically unsafe when understaffed.

Founded in the 18th century, the hospital, also a large teaching hospital, houses one of London’s busiest paediatric accident and emergency departments.

Also on the picket line was Raoul Li-Everington who has been a junior doctor for seven months and was born at the hospital. He works in Scotland but wanted to show solidarity to NHS colleagues here.

He said:

I want to specialise in general practice but there’s already a shortage, and then they [patients] go to A&E and struggle a lot. Patients are not seen for hours and it’s a failure for the community and is a fundamental strain.

“I know this has been an issue for a long time but it needs to be sorted out,” he added.

“One of my patients has been in hospital for four months” he said, explaining the social services were not in place to take care of out patients.

Despite the challenges as soon as he entered the workforce, Li-Everington said:

I couldn’t picture myself doing anything else. I don’t think any doctor goes into it for the money.

The hours are brutal and I don’t have social life but wake up every morning and think ‘Would I rather be behind a desk all day or have real human interaction and work with the smartest people from different specialisms?’ and that’s what drives me. And I don’t want the NHS to implode.

“A demoralising workplace is not best way to start,” he added

Updated

This is one of the best placards/series of placards I’ve seen so far today:

Here is NHS England’s advice for patients during the industrial action, although most of it applies everyday.

The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell visited a picket line in west London this morning.

Phillip Mansell is outside Chelsea and Westminster hospital for the Guardian.

Eoin Dinneen, senior house officer there, told him that it is “insulting” to be told Saturdays are normal working hours.

Two sisters, one a junior doctor and the other an NHS management trainee, have written about the impact the new contract will have on each other’s life for the Guardian’s Healthcare Network.

Anna Babic, the sister who is a management trainee writes:

The contract is questionable in terms of workers’ rights. Fragmented shift patterns are already having a huge impact on the health of NHS staff and their families. We already have the challenge of an often overtired, under supported workforce; we should be finding ways to deal with this and reduce sickness rates, decrease reliance on agency staff, and generally make working conditions better, not worse. A tired workforce results in unsafe care and no time to do anything beyond immediate patient survival. Medicine isn’t just about survival, it is far more holistic.

A Mexican wave from strikers in Newcastle.

The Green party is backing the striking junior doctors. The party’s health spokesman, Larry Sanders, who is the brother of US presidential hopeful Bernie, said:

The hypocrisy of Jeremy Hunt announcing that he was imposing a contract on junior doctors exactly one year after he ‘called time on NHS bullying’ is astounding. Those junior doctors are essential to a functioning NHS and they will go on to become leaders of the service. They need to be treated with the respect that they deserve.

It is clear to all that Jeremy Hunt’s agenda is to destroy the NHS and to pass it into private hands supported by an insurance scheme. He has gone on record with these views and he is therefore not a fit person to be in charge of the NHS.

It is time for Mr Hunt to go before for he completely destroys the NHS and the good will that it runs on.

The junior doctors are fighting for the right to be able to care for us.

Lots more pictures are starting to come in from - in some cases very wet - picket lines.

This picture is from a picket line in west London

Strikers in south London have been given some musical support.

This is a useful explainer by my colleague, the health editor, Sarah Boseley, about why the talks to resolve the dispute over the new junior doctors contract failed.

Updated

Some patients, unaffected by the industrial action, are tweeting support for the junior doctors.

Junior doctors working in emergency care are not striking but NHS hospitals in England nevertheless expects additional pressure on A&E departments.

Anne Rainsberry, NHS England’s regional director for London, predicted a “difficult couple of days” for the NHS with around 5,000 operations postponed.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, she said:

This is going to be a difficult couple of days for the NHS - there is no doubt that [a] 48 hour [strike] puts significantly more pressure on services. However, I’ve no doubt the NHS will pull out all the stops as it has done in the other two strikes, to minimise the disruption.

She added: “We are expecting around 5,000 procedures to be affected and need to be rescheduled as a result of the action over the next couple of days.

Hospitals will always prioritise clinically urgent cases, she insisted.

Updated

Strike begins

The strike is officially underway

Some junior doctors who are striking today will be running free life support classes for parents as a way of using their skills during the industrial action.

One #littlelifesavers event is being held in Tooting, south London, home to St George’s hospital.

Dagan Lonsdale, a registrar working in intensive care and clinical pharmacology at St George’s, said:

The idea is that junior doctors are volunteering their time on the strike days to talk to parents about life support for children. The idea is to just do something positive on the day of industrial action because junior doctors aren’t people for standing around braziers on a picket line and people feel they want to do something positive and show that this is not about striking for money.

We really do have patients’ best interests at heart, we’re interested in pursuing our vocation, which is saving people’s lives.

Junior Doctor Dagan Lonsdale
Junior Doctor Dagan Lonsdale Photograph: Alicia Canter for the Guardian

65% support doctors' striking

A poll of 860 adults by Ipsos MORI for the BBC showed 65% support junior doctors going on strike, a similar proportion as backed them ahead of last month’s industrial action. The proportion against the strike dropped from 22% last month to 17%.

However, the proportion of people blaming both sides for the dispute has risen from 18% to 28%. The majority - 57% - still blame the government.

Summary

At 8am junior doctors will launch their third strike in three months over the terms of a new contract. This time the walkout will last 48 hours, whereas on the previous two occasions the industrial action lasted 24 hours.

The reason for the escalation is that the day after the last strike, the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced that he was going to impose the new contract on junior doctors after months of negotiations failed to reach a resolution.

NHS England is predicting “a difficult couple of days”. It says that more than 5,000 operations have been cancelled as a result of the strike, which does not include staff working in emergency wards. An unknown number of consultations at outpatient clinics will be affected.

The industrial action is about changes to pay and working conditions, with the key sticking point the removal of overtime payments for working during the day on Saturday.

Hunt is championing the changes as necessary to deliver the government’s pledge of a seven day NHS and improve patient safety.

The BMA, which represents 38,000 junior doctors, 98% of whom voted to strike in a November ballot, had said it will worsen working conditions for its members and thereby jeopardise patient care.

We will be providing live updates, including from colleagues on the picket lines.

You can send me pictures etc to haroon(dot)siddique@theguardian.com or tweet me @Haroon_Siddique

Updated

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