Resident doctors are on strike because they're ‘frustrated’ with how the NHS is being run, councillor says
A councillor has said that resident doctors are on strike because they’re “frustrated” with how the NHS is being run.
Coun Karen Lee (Labour – Ermine and Cathedral division) told members of Lincolnshire County Council’s health scrutiny committee that resident doctors have gone on strike as a very last resort, not because they want to.
Resident doctors (formerly junior doctors) staged a five day walk-out in a dispute over pay and conditions.
The strike began at 7am on Wednesday, December 17, and ran until 7am on Monday, December 22.
The British Medical Association is calling for a ‘genuine long-term plan’ for pay increases to make up for years of ‘below-inflation’ pay rises.
At a meeting on Wednesday, December 17, Coun Lee said: “People need to realise that people only go on strike as a very last measure – when they’re absolutely frustrated and there’s no other way out of it.
“As a nurse, I was faced with this choice. Personally, it always happened when I’d been on a night shift and didn’t feel like having done 12 and a half hours, the last 30 minutes I could walk out at handover, so I just stayed and just kept very quiet about it.
“But I understand why GPs went on strike and I understand why the resident doctors are going on strike and I totally disagree with Wes Streeting’s (Health Secretary) perspective on it.
“I think if this country wants a quality NHS, they’ve got to fund it properly and that’s the bottom line.
“We’ve got to pay people what it costs. It doesn’t come cheap.”
Dr Reid Baker, chairperson of the Lincolnshire Local Medical Committee, told the committee that GPs are in talks with the government about how to reform the way that surgeries are run.
He said: “We don’t use the word strike, because that’s not what we’ve done.
“We had collective action last year and we’re looking at what the dispute means with the government at the moment.
“Clearly there are strikes at the moment – literally with resident doctors.
“But GPs have been talking to the government for quite some time and avoided any action as much as possible because we wanted to work constructively.
“That promise of a new contract was why we agreed to this current contract.
“We want those reforms that bring a high-quality, sustainable safe general practice that we can all work within safely and happily and our patients get excellent care from. What anything will look like is yet to be determined.”
Mr Baker went on to say that GPs “care deeply” about their patients and said that they wouldn’t be having consultations with the government if “fundamental” changes weren’t needed.