Article by Ellis Karran

After more than 600 appointments and surgeries were cancelled in Lincolnshire by junior doctors going on strike, the latest six-day industrial action is likely to be "much more severe" this time around, the NHS' medical director has warned.

There will be six days of industrial action, spread out across 144 hours from January 3 to January 9, 2024, with junior doctors, accounting for around half of all doctors working in hospitals, walking out for these days over disputes around pay and working conditions.

The British Medical Association, which represents junior doctors, has been pushing for a 35% pay rise for its members. The BMA claims this will restore earnings back to 2008 levels in real terms, which accounts for inflation as well, while the government has argued this is an unaffordable figure.

Junior doctors cover a broad range of the workforce, with the tag being given to people with a variety of experience levels, whether it be first year foundations or someone who has been working as a doctor for over ten years. Salaries can vary from just shy of £30,000 for a foundation year one doctor on a 2002 contract, to over £60,000 for an ST6-8 doctor, according to the BMA.

In the last round of junior doctor strikes — which took place between December 20 and 23 — there were 1,001 recorded staff absences across Greater Lincolnshire's health sector, collating NHS England's data from the region's four hospital trusts — United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT), Lincolnshire Partnership NHS Foundation Trust (LPFT), Lincolnshire Community Health Services NHS Trust (LCHS) and Northern Lincolnshire & Goole NHS Foundation Trust (NLaG).

ULHT was the worst affected by this in Greater Lincolnshire, with over 200 absences for the first three days of strike action, compared to around 100 a day at NLaG and approximately a dozen each day at LPFT.

Despite the high number of staff absences, ULHT seeked to mitigate any risk of cancelling appointments, contributing to just 10 of the 8,780 rescheduled acute inpatient appointments or procedures in England during the strikes. A total of 204 outpatient procedures were also rescheduled or halted at ULHT as a result of industrial action.

As for NLaG, there were 456 inpatient and outpatient appointments cancelled by the strikes, meaning that Greater Lincolnshire had a total of 670 shelved procedures across the three days of strikes in December.

There has not been a visible picket line outside Lincoln County Hospital for the last few rounds of strike action held by the BMA, with the association claiming its new strategy is to focus on boosting numbers around larger regional sites, such as Nottingham.

NHS national medical director, Professor Sir Stephen Powis has predicted the impact will be "much more severe" when the six-day strikes begin this week.

He said: "Unfortunately the impact is likely to be much more severe next week with six days of industrial action planned by junior doctors, the longest in NHS history, at a time when hospitals usually experience the most pressure with high demand and higher levels of virus admissions."

During a visit to County Hospital Louth in her constituency over the festive period, Health Secretary Victoria Atkins urged the BMA to call off strike action and instead requested: "Come back to the table and we will get this done."

As hospitals report six-fold increases of flu cases and thousands of COVID-19-related staff absences up and down the country, the NHS will once again have its back to the wall as the British Medical Association and the Department for Health & Social Care continue to struggle in their quest to strike an agreement and end the long-running strike saga.

The Health Secretary will be hoping for a similar result to the one achieved in December, as a revised pay offer for NHS consultants was put to union members after a series of strikes last year. Consultants were offered an additional 4.95% increase alongside the 6% already offered, while an overhaul of individual doctor contracts meant some consultants could earn up to 13% more, compared to the 5% and a flat one-off sum given to nurses and other healthcare professionals who were on strike in 2023.