'We will end up with an NHS without doctors'

A paediatrician who has taken to a picket line and joined dozens of resident doctors as they began a six-day strike over jobs and pay has said the NHS may "end up without doctors" if the long-running dispute continues.

The British Medical Association (BMA), which represents the doctors, has been holding strikes in England since 2023. This latest action – the 15th strike – comes after talks broke down at the end of March.

Dr Melissa Ryan, 45, a paediatric registrar, said she was frustrated that the government was cutting training places and some children were waiting years for assessments.

The government says the doctors' expectations are unreasonable and unrealistic.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said the long-running dispute with resident doctors, formerly called junior doctors, had so far cost the NHS an estimated £3bn.

Ryan, who works at Lincoln County Hospital but was on the picket line outside Queen's Medical Centre in Nottingham, 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."

NHS officials have said the strike, which started at 07:00 BST on Tuesday, would be "difficult" but urgent and emergency care would run as usual.

Senior medics have been drafted in to provide cover in emergency settings, but some pre-planned treatments and appointments have been cancelled.

Despite receiving pay rises worth 33% over the past four years, the BMA argues that doctors are still being paid a fifth less than they were in 2008 once inflation is taken into account.

Standing on the picket line outside Hull Royal Infirmary, Dr Becky Lavelle told the BBC that doctors had "the worst pay erosion of any profession, public or private sector, for the last 17 years".

"We're waiting for the government to wake up and realise that they actually need to restore our pay back to where it was," she said.

"Three billion pounds would have been enough to give us exactly what we wanted right at the start of this dispute."

The government offered a package of measures last month in a bid to end the dispute, including 1,000 additional training places, but the package was withdrawn after the union announced industrial action.

Ryan said: "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."

Lavelle said appointments were being cancelled at the Hull hospital because there was a shortage of doctors to "cover the hospital at all hours".

Last month, Hull University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust was deemed by NHS England to be the worst performing hospital trust. But bosses said its challenges were "not new".

"Part of our issue is that we don't have enough specialty training places for doctors to progress to become the consultants and the specialists of tomorrow," said Lavelle.

"In this hospital right now, the waiting times to go into A&E are to see doctors.

"We need resident doctors to train to become consultants, and we can't do that without training jobs."

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