The chants and honks of support during a strike can be cathartic for some, but for others it can be a time for sombre reflection. “I don’t have a good answer for that, not one that doesn’t include a few swearwords,” said one junior doctor with two children, who did not want to be named, when asked about the impact her job has had on her family.
She preceded her brief answers with lengthy, contemplative pauses. During the pandemic, she was sent to Covid wards twice. “I got PTSD,” she said. “I’ll leave it there.”
She was one of about two dozen junior doctors gathered in Oxford city centre as part of a 72-hour strike organised by the British Medical Association (BMA). Those who spoke to the Guardian were furious about the state of the NHS and felt there was a lack of support from both major political parties.
Audrey Davies, 30, has been a junior doctor for four years. “The day-to-day is pretty variable, but mostly demoralising,” she said. “Everyone has been trained to do better and wants to do better, but you can’t, because the resources and staff aren’t there.”
Davies said the infrastructure in the NHS was crumbling. “We’ve had days where the heating is broken and have been unable to operate. That’s whole days of operations that have been cancelled. Other times the ventilation systems are broken, meaning surgical theatres get too hot and operations are cancelled.
“On top of all that, you’re understaffed,” she said. “I think it gives a good idea why it is so hard to work in the system at the moment.”
A junior doctor who was nine months into her training, and who did not want to be named, said working in the NHS was “like fighting a fire with a bucket of water”. They said: “Conditions for patients and ourselves are at an all-time low. Corridor medicine is becoming so common that at a nursing conference, one of the talks was about corridor medicine. The other day I was sat on a stepladder because there was no chair.”
Ashok Chhabra, 31, has worked in the NHS since he was 18. “I was a porter and I loved it,” he said. His enthusiasm has waned in the intervening 13 years. “Being a junior doctor comes with lots of rotations, which means moving to different hospitals,” he said. “It can be exhausting to be moved around the country. It breaks down your friendships and you see people’s relationships break down. Some have to move three hours away from their partner for a rotation.”
Chhabra said morale had plummeted post-Covid. “There’s no social environment. Nobody’s happy to be there any more. Those days where you had to push were hard. They have become the norm.”
Dr Matt Bilton, a BMA representative, said: “Over the past 15 years, pay for doctors has failed to keep up with inflation pretty much every single year, and as a result, doctors are now paid approximately 30% less in real terms than they were in 2008.”
In March, Labour said it would double the number of medical school places to 15,000 a year. Speaking to a crowd of picketers, Bilton criticised the policies of the Conservatives and Labour.
“Rishi Sunak puts his hands in his pockets, has a rummage around and offers 5%. Pocket change,” he said. “Meanwhile, Keir Starmer calls for more medical students, missing the point entirely. Fix the leaky bucket by pouring more water in.” He said the poor pay and conditions was leading to a retention crisis.
Davies plans on staying in the NHS to complete her current training programme. “My husband’s Australian. It’s very difficult for me to say that I’m not seriously looking at going to Australia,” she said.
Sanchit Turaga, 30, a junior medical registrar, is leaving the NHS for now to start a PhD in October. He said: “Continuing in this situation isn’t sustainable for a lot of us.”
