NHS doctors in Cambridgeshire at 'breaking point' amid strikes
Resident doctors are continuing to walk out
A doctor on the picket line in Cambridge said she's seeing the NHS at "breaking point" as she fights for better pay and more jobs.
It comes as tens of thousands of resident doctors in England are staging a six-day walkout until Monday (April 13), their 15th strike since 2023.
Earlier this week, doctors have been striking outside Addenbrooke's Hospital - one of two pickets arranged by the British Medical Association (BMA) in the East of England - with staff and patients joining forces.
"The NHS is at a breaking point," Dr Schnell D'sa, co-chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee, said.
"On a day-to-day basis at work, I see patients lined in corridors and it's almost that the public are used to it now.
"I see patients walking away from the emergency department because they simply can't wait any longer."
Doctors 'overworked'
The strikes have been going ahead after the Government took a key part of its offer off the table.
The Department of Health and Social Care said last week that an offer of 1,000 extra training places would no longer be “financially or operationally” possible.
Dr D'sa is halfway into an eight-year training programme to become an anaesthetist.
She feels doctors are "understaffed and overworked", and that she feels saddened to work in the NHS at the moment.
"I see frail, elderly patients with hip fractures or needing knee replacements just struggling getting by because their operations keep getting delayed and that will impact their lives and their loved one's lives who'll have to look after them," Dr D'sa said.
"The morale of doctors keeps going down, so for it to be improved, the power lies with the Government and that's why we've been negotiating with them in good faith."
A poll by YouGov found 55% of British adults disagree with resident doctors going on strike, while 37% said they support the action.
Roger Green - a stage four cancer patient at Addenbrooke's Hospital - has been supporting doctors who've walked out.
"I'm so indebted to the support I've had, not only in terms of expertise, but you can almost say loving care by which the staff at Addenbrooke's have given me," he said.
"If there are no special courses that can be done, the number of doctors that have that specialism will decrease; they will either disappear into the private sector or will go overseas."
The Government says its latest offer to improve pay, career progression and working conditions would have seen resident doctors more than a third better off than four years ago.
Health officials have raised concerns that the strike will be particularly disruptive because of the action taking place during the Easter break, when many NHS staff will have booked time off with their families.
Strike ban called
In a letter to healthcare leaders, Sir Jim Mackey - chief executive of NHS England - said the strike action “has been deliberately timed to cause havoc.
“I am so grateful to everyone for all you’ve done ahead of today, during today and what you will be doing over the next five plus days to contend with these pressures, maintain services and help keep the show on the road for our patients.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting has said that “people and patients are understandably fed up" on the doctor strikes.
While Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has called for doctors to be banned from striking.
Dr Jack Fletcher, chairman of the BMA resident doctors committee, said the strikes were "entirely avoidable.
“If we keep treating doctors as an inconvenience rather than an asset, we will end up with an NHS that simply doesn’t have enough residents or consultant doctors to give patients the surgery and procedures they need."