Resident doctors head out on strike across South Yorkshire and Derbyshire in pay dispute
Doctors at hospitals across the region are on strike for the next six days
Patients are sometimes waiting years for care because there aren’t enough specialists, resident doctors have said, as they began a six-day strike in their row with the Government over jobs and pay.
The Government announced that it was taking 1,000 additional training places off the table as the dispute intensified.
But medics on the ground expressed their dismay at the news, saying there needs to be an increase in specialist training posts.
This would help achieve the Government’s aim of cutting waiting lists, they added.
Paul Smith, 38, who is a radiology resident doctor said Wes Streeting has “consistently gone back on his word” over doctors’ pay.
Dr Smith, who lives in Nottingham, works at the Royal Hallamshire Hospital and Northern General Hospital in Sheffield but stood at the picket line at the Queen’s Medical Centre in his home city.
He told the Press Association: “We are highly-trained professionals that go through multiple years of training and we make serious sacrifices in other aspects of our lives to dedicate ourselves to this profession.
“Do we want to be rewarded for that? Yes we do.
“When I applied to medical school in 2014, that was part of the deal that I was signing up for – a stable job and a solid middle class income. And we are seeing that being eroded over the last 10, 15 years.”
He added: “I don’t want to strike. I was just saying how much I love my training, I love what I do. I want to be in work and I want to be learning, and I don’t want to take the financial hit.
“Unfortunately, Wes Streeting has consistently gone back on his word in terms of what he’s going to do with pay. The pay offer that was last accepted by the BMA was on the understanding there was going to be a move towards pay restoration.
“What we have seen immediately is the offer of pay cuts.”
A group of around 30 doctors and their supporters picketed Leeds General Infirmary.
BMA rep Francesco Palazzo, an emergency medicine specialist trainee at nearby St James’s Hospital, said: “I’m truly disappointed. I’d rather be at work. I didn’t really think it was going to come to this.
“We’re on strike because the rug has been pulled out from underneath the negotiations at the last minute by the Government.”
Dr Palazzo added: “My father has been waiting for two years for an operation on his shoulder and he’s been in pain this entire time.
“And he’s unable to get that operation because there aren’t enough specialists working who can perform that operation for him.
“We’ve been arguing for years that we need an increase in specialist training posts and now the Government, at the last minute, has chosen to take those away and off the table.”
Speaking from a picket line outside Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham, Dr Melissa Ryan, a paediatric registrar, said: “We’ve got young doctors coming through and then they’re worried about finding a job. If we continue this way, we are going to end up with an NHS without doctors.
“We’re disappointed that we’re back out on strike. To be perfectly honest, I don’t want to be on strike, I want to be at work.”
The 45-year-old continued: “I work with children and I see families who are waiting months, sometimes years for appointments, to get assessments for kids – ADHD is a prime example. That’s not because doctors don’t care, it’s because there’s not enough of us.
“It’s frustrating that the Government seems to want to solve the staffing crisis by cutting further training places.
“Doctors shouldn’t be a cost, they should be seen as means to reducing the waiting lists.”
Health Secretary Wes Streeting told Times Radio: “I didn’t remove those training places, the BMA did when they rejected the deal – they seem to think they can have all of the benefits of the deal at the same time as rejecting it.
“The jobs are still there, but what the training places do is provide higher pay and career progression for those doctors, that’s what the BMA have rejected.”
Asked about whether or not the union should have put the Government offer to a vote, Rahul Mehta, 31, a psychiatry trainee, said: “This is a democratic organisation, our leadership was democratically elected.
“We don’t expect the union to constantly do referendums on whether we should come out and strike or not, and so on.”
Speaking on the BMA’s picket line outside St Thomas’s Hospital in London, Dr Mehta added: “I think, actually, the onus is on the Government to come up with a better offer.
“They were willing to dangle a thousand jobs in front of us, and then take them away as soon as we said we could use our democratic right to strike.”