Joint NHS strikes: No indicators of infuriated medics backing down as well being service faces new disaster

“A nightmare. Absolute nightmare. It can’t happen.”

Those had been the phrases of a senior NHS Trust chief once I referred to as to interrupt the information of joint motion by junior medical doctors and consultants over 4 days throughout England in October.

This will successfully convey the NHS to a grinding halt.

Christmas-style rotas will probably be in place to cowl emergencies. But that is it.

It is the worst-case state of affairs and one which was all the time more likely to occur regardless of how unpalatable it appeared.

A senior marketing consultant advised me as a lot as we speak.

“We’re effectively both doctors,” he mentioned. “So it makes sense.”

It makes much more sense when you think about how deeply entrenched either side are.

The authorities and the BMA should not even speaking.

And that is what, I sense, actually infuriates the medics.

They inform me Health Secretary Steve Barclay refuses to speak to them, and simply ignores them.

And that causes much more resentment.

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Doctors in Scotland have accepted a pay deal – so it exhibits a settlement may be reached.

The authorities may suppose that as a result of it received the nursing unions to just accept a pay deal it would have the ability to do the identical with the medical doctors and consultants.

If they suppose that then they’re severely misunderstanding the energy of feeling.

Both consultants and junior medical doctors have a mandate for months of strike motion deep into the winter.

If final 12 months’s NHS disaster was dangerous, this 12 months’s might be lots worse.