As with the two previous strikes, buses, trucks and cars beeped their support for the junior doctors standing outside Salford Royal Hospital this morning as they began the first of three 48 hour strikes.
The Tory Government, led by Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt, promised in its manifesto `a truly seven day NHS' but it can only be done by employing more staff or spreading existing staff more thinly around wards and making them work longer hours. There's no extra money to fund the former option, therefore hospitals will be manifestly unsafe for patients.
It's this point that junior doctors were eager to get across to the public on the picket line outside Salford Royal...
"We're raising deep concerns about already short staffing and short rotas, services being stretched further and also being stretched further withut the provision of any new finances or doctors" explained Jonathan Meyer, a junior doctor "Even in front of the Health select committee, the Department of Health representatives themselves had no feasibility, they had no costings and they had no real details about how this is achievable...
"I don't think a single person out here today would oppose increased service provision, especially at the weekends" he added "However it has to be done sensibly and it has to be done based on the evidence. The Tories are being what I can only describe as belligerent. I think there are no new answers coming out of the Department of Health. Jeremy Hunt himself has shied away from answering questions in the Commons and is shying away from meaningful discussions with junior doctors on the issue."
All NHS staff know where the junior doctors are coming from, and at Salford Royal the consultants are supporting them and staffing the wards. Meanwhile, emergency care is being provided throughout the strike.
However, as routine appointments and surgery get cancelled, the Tories seem determined to tough it out, stating they will impose new contracts to `force' junior doctors to work longer hours...
"I think really it's a cost cutting exercise, if anything" says Jonathan "If I'm getting a pay rise...why does their own calculator tell me that I'm going to be a fifth worse off next year than now?" he asked "There's an objection as well to having our weekends classified as normal working days. It set a really dangerous precedent. We already work at weekends. I myself worked on Christmas and New Year this year and I'm due to work at Easter. I have no problem with this, however I must be remunerated and I must be in a safe environment to do so. I do not think this contract will offer any of those things"
At the last Salford strike, the doctors were adamant that they wouldn't back down, and they are still just as determined...
"There's going to be a legal challenge to the imposition which I think is a very important step for us" said Jonathan "I think we need to keep going and keep opposing this because, fundamentally, the NHS is an institution on which the British public very much rely. It's an institution which deserves the funding, and the passion that a lot of people working within it have, not just the junior doctors.
"I think we have golden opportunity here to represent, not just doctors but NHS professionals across the board, who are being put in impossible situations on a day to day basis by underfunding and staff shortages which will only be made worse with this contract..."
The junior doctors strike continues tomorrow...
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