- Some 67,034 appointments were rescheduled due to the five-day strike
Junior doctors in England are awaiting a call from the new Labour government after officials promised to start pay negotiations on “day one”.
Health leaders have urged the government to resolve the long-running dispute as a “priority” after it emerged that tens of thousands of appointments were postponed as a result of the latest five-day strike.
The National Health Service in England reported that 67,034 appointments, procedures and operations were postponed as a result of the junior doctors’ strike.
He This means that 1,491,303 appointments have been postponed since the NHS strike (affecting staff such as doctors, nurses, physiotherapists and paramedics) began in late 2022.
But not all NHS trusts have provided figures on cancelled appointments, meaning the true scale of disruption is expected to be higher.
In the latest blow to patients, 67,034 hospital appointments in England were rescheduled due to a five-day strike by junior doctors from the British Medical Association (BMA) earlier this week.
NHS leaders have also said the real impact of the strikes is masked by the data, with many hospitals having stopped booking surgeries and other appointments on announced strike days.
NHS national medical director Professor Sir Stephen Powis said today: ‘These figures highlight the impact this latest round of strikes has had on patients, with more than 67,000 appointments postponed in recent days.
“But we know that in reality it is likely to be even higher.”
The latest figures from NHS England show that around 6.33 million patients were waiting for 7.57 million treatments at the end of April in England.
This figure represents an increase from the 6.29 million patients and 7.54 million treatments that there were at the end of March.
More than 300,000 people had been waiting for more than a year, compared to less than 2,000 before the pandemic.
By comparison, around 4.4 million were stuck in the system when the pandemic hit the UK.
The action marked the eleventh strike by doctors after their first strike in March 2023.
The BMA She says her demands are for a “pay restoration” given that previous NHS pay rises for doctors have not kept pace with inflation since 2008.
The junior doctors’ committee had been in talks with the government for three months in an effort to reach an agreement before the strike.
But the talks broke down. The conflict has collapsed despite both sides confirming last month that they had hired a mediator to try to “break the deadlock.”
At the time BMA chiefs said the Government had failed to make a credible offer and junior doctors were “fed up and running out of patience”.
Junior doctors in their first year now have a basic salary of £32,300, while those with three years’ experience earn £43,900. Senior doctors earn £63,100.
Professor Sir Stephen Powis added: ‘I am extremely grateful to staff for working incredibly hard to keep patients safe and prioritise care for those who needed it most, when demand for urgent and emergency services has been high.
‘Colleagues across the NHS will now do everything they can to ensure that patients who were due for consultations, tests or treatment get rescheduled appointments as quickly as possible.’
Junior doctors in their first year of training earn a basic salary of £32,300, while those with three years’ experience earn £43,900 and senior doctors £63,100.
Ministers previously offered junior doctors a pay rise of 8.8 per cent, on average, for the 2023/24 financial year.
However, the increase was larger for first-year doctors, who were given a 10.3 percent raise.
Ministers insisted this was the final offer, but former Health Secretary Victoria Atkins offered doctors an additional 3 per cent on top of this increase.
The union then claimed that this increased sum remained “completely insufficient”.
In April, consultants in England accepted a government offer, ending an industrial dispute that has dragged on for more than a year.