Resident doctors in England began their latest five-day strike on Wednesday to protest against falling incomes driven by the rising cost of living, and a shortage of training and employment posts that is limiting their career development.
Formerly known as junior doctors, resident doctors represent the first step for medical graduates entering the UK's healthcare workforce. However, many now struggle to secure permanent positions when transitioning from their foundational training into the specialist training which will see them become fully qualified doctors in a specific medical field.
Meanwhile, patients are also enduring increasingly long waiting times for treatment as the strain on the UK's National Health Service(NHS) begins to take its toll.
"We have the longest waiting list in NHS history, and now we have record doctor and nurse unemployment. Those two things don't make sense. If we have a government that really cares about the health of the people, that really wants to improve patient care and get these waiting lists down, we need to improve and increase the number of face-to-face interactions," said a resident doctor named Andrew Meyerson, who was among those protesting outside the St. Thomas' hospital in London.
The current strike comes at a particularly challenging time for the NHS, which is already under significant pressure due to a surge in winter flu cases, as hospitals across England say they are at near full capacity and suffering severe staffing shortages.
Resident doctors stress that it is not their intention to bring further misery to an already struggling healthcare system by prolonging such industrial action, but rather to draw public attention to the long-standing structural issues which have blighted the NHS.
"Unfortunately in the UK, in England specifically, we have doctors who are going unemployed because there simply isn't enough jobs to train us. We have long waiting times. None of us want to be on the picket line, we want to be next to our patients at the bedside, giving our best, doing what we do best," said Sarah Zbeidy, another resident doctor.
The NHS is now facing a dilemma which could push it into an even deeper crisis, as it grapples with a shortage of staff needed to treat patients while also lacking both sufficient vacancies and resources to employ and train more young doctors.
Data analyzed by the British Medical Association has highlighted the scale of the problem facing the beleaguered healthcare system, showing that the NHS waiting list in England stood at 7.3 million cases in October, with approximately 6.24 million individual patients waiting for treatment.
Resident doctors in England start new five-day strike as pay dispute rumbles on
