Junior doctors strike at Queen Alexandra as they continue to fight for pay restoration

Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) in England have launched three-day strike as the arguments with the government regarding pay continues.

A number of junior doctors across the country will take part in three days of walkouts this week, in what could be one of the biggest days of industrial action that has happened since 2016.

Seven years ago, junior doctors embarked on a series of strikes from January to March in the hope to improve pay and working conditions, but nearly a decade on and many have said that the NHS is currently at its worst – forcing them to strike once more.

Matt Smith, junior doctor in the accident and emergency department, said: ‘There have been times that I have finished my shift and just cried in my car and there is no-one who checks up on you.

‘You have to put your whole body and soul into your job if you want to do it well and I think so many of us do.’

Matt has been a junior doctor for five years and he said that the working conditions need improving, not only for NHS staff, but also for the patients receiving care.

He added: ‘There’s lots of things, pay being among them but the main thing for me really is the working conditions. I think people would be very surprised about the working conditions that we, as a workforce, have to deal with.

‘The amount of stress and love that goes into it, I feel like I turn myself inside out for it and then to take home less than £15 an hour is hard.’

Lisa Sheehan is a junior doctor at the breast cancer care department and has previously worked in Austraulia where she said that she was being paid four times the amount that she is here, but due to family she moved home.

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She said: ‘Our pay just doesn’t match up our expectations, our qualifications, our education and working in the NHS at the moment we can see before our very eyes that the working conditions are deteriorating.

‘We don’t have the overtime, we don’t have the resources and a lot of my friends and colleagues are moving to other countries.’

Joshua Morton, who is a junior doctor in A&E and is also the deputy chair for the regional junior doctor committee of the BMA, said: ‘We are here today because junior doctors have lost a quarter of our pay since 2008.

‘It is unnaceptable to us that junior doctors are people who have five to 10 years of experience, they do complicated surgeries and it is unacceptable that we have lost a quarter of our pay.’

Iram Hassan moved back to the England from Ireland and has been working at the hospital for nine months – taking an approximate 30 per cent pay decrease.

She said: ‘There is so much difference, and it was very hard for me.’