On Wednesday, thousands of medical professionals in Britain began a six-day walkout, which was expected to be the longest in the history of the publicly financed National Health Service.
Managers announced that junior physicians, or those in their early years of practice, would be canceling tens of thousands of planned appointments and surgeries throughout England and Wales during their strike. The physicians, who provide the majority of care in hospitals and clinics, want to take Tuesday off from work until seven in the morning.
It has been necessary to call in senior physicians and other medical professionals to cover for critical care, maternity services, and emergency services.
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The strike occurred “immediately after the Christmas and New Year period because of the pressures and demands, and of course we’ve got flu, we’ve got COVID,” according to Julian Hartley, chief executive of health care managers’ organization NHS Providers. Hartley said this was one of the hardest times of the year for the health service.
Therefore, he stated, “there will be a significant impact on patients.”
A year of continuous strikes in the UK’s health sector resulted from employees’ demands for wage increases to keep up with the skyrocketing cost of living.
The health system, which is already overburdened and attempting to catch up with backlogs caused by the coronavirus outbreak, has been put under pressure by the walkouts.
The government has agreed compensation agreements with nurses, ambulance drivers, and senior physicians; however, the junior doctor’s union has refused to budge, and talks have come to a standstill. The union says it won’t negotiate until it receives a “credible” compensation offer, while the government says it won’t undertake any more negotiations until doctors call off their strike.
“The notion that we’re hellbent on calling strikes and all we want to do is call strikes is not what we want,” said Dr. Vivek Trivedi, co-chair of the British Medical Association’s Junior Doctors Committee. “What we want is to negotiate an offer we can put to our members and for our members to accept it.”
