Wes Streeting is the indulgent one, not striking resident doctors

When I step into A&E, it’s like operating in a war zone.

Trolleys line corridors that were never designed to hold patients. Curtains are pulled to create the illusion of privacy and dignity. And every spare corner has been repurposed, every metre stretched beyond what it was built for.

Doctors move constantly between crises, putting out one fire only to be pulled towards the next. 

Decisions are made quickly, often with incomplete information, because there is no time to wait for ideal conditions that never arrive.

We resident doctors, the backbone of the NHS, deserve to be rewarded fairly for this.

Instead, poor working conditions, unstable contracts with worsening terms, mass unemployment and pay that has been systematically hollowed out since 2008 mean that many of us now earn less in real terms than doctors at the same stage did over a decade ago.

Working in the West Midlands as a resident doctor was once a privilege, but it’s now a real challenge – and the cracks are on full show, especially among my cohort of colleagues. 

That’s why I, and many of my resident doctor colleagues, are striking this week.

And for that, we’ve been made public enemy number one by Health Secretary Wes Streeting. Instead of negotiating fairly, we feel he’s thrown fuel on the fire. 

Throughout this winter – and sadly many before it – the troubled way of working that has defined my residency has continued. 

Despite the physical and mental exhaustion, I didn’t even question it.

That is, until a colleague of mine had been broken to the point of tears and confessed that she, and everyone around her, were existing in a hypnotic, zombie-like state. She pointed out that we’re utterly neglecting our physical needs while being martyrs to a healthcare system ripping at the seams.

For resident (formerly junior) doctors, finishing on time is rare, short breaks are a luxury and on particularly bad days, there isn’t even any time to get a sip of water all day. This is the reality observed by all my colleagues.

The initial excitement and uncertainty of starting medicine I once felt have long since passed, and what remains is an acute awareness of how difficult and unstable the work has become.

With chronic underinvestment in the NHS and no meaningful workforce planning – by either the previous Tory Governments or, it seems, under this Labour administration – the service, it seems to me, has been reduced to a minimum provision model that routinely fails patients and staff alike.

Even though the current political environment is hostile, with politicians from all parties hurling insults at doctors, the charge being led by Wes Streeting is particularly disappointing.

His resistance to negotiate on pay is as harmful as it is unhelpful. He suggests that these strikes have come ‘at the moment of maximum danger’ branding them ‘self-indulgent, irresponsible and dangerous’, but when the scale of the deterioration has become impossible to ignore, he should surely want to help those of us on the frontline.

He should choose his words far more carefully. 

Because there’s nothing indulgent about the chaos I experience daily.

I now see late diagnoses of cancer and other serious conditions with alarming regularity. One case I will never forget was a young woman, ten days after giving birth to her second child, sitting in a busy hospital when she was told she had a large brain tumour. Her prognosis was poor.

I am left feeling that I have failed in my mission to improve lives. But this failure is not personal. It sits squarely with those in power, while we are left to deal with the consequences.

The rate of burnout among junior doctors is profound, I find it deplorable that 79% of trusts told NHS providers they had concerns of staff burnout. Compared to the general population, doctors are more likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, and insomnia.

As well as a significant erosion in pay, doctors today are asking to simply be there for their patients: to have secure employment. The BMA has surveyed doctors across the country and found 34% of resident doctors had no substantive employment after August 2025, with the figure rising to 52% with the newest qualified doctors.

The next time you can’t see your GP, or you’re waiting double digit hours in A&E, waiting over a year for a specialist appointment, maybe you should ask yourself whether secure employment for doctors sounds unreasonable. Our unemployment crisis is a public health crisis.

As for our salary, £22 per hour is actually nothing short of a bargain compared to most other developed countries. 

Don’t forget, the cost of actually being a doctor in the NHS – indemnity fees, registration fees, trade union fees, examination fees and portfolio fees – tallies up to thousands of pounds every year. If we can’t pay those fees, we can’t help and believe me, we want to.

The government says ‘there’s no more money for resident doctors’, but paying us fairly is an investment that pays for itself many times over. 

Resident doctors are striking not just to restore our pay and fight for secure employment, but to create the working conditions that we – and ultimately our patients – deserve.

The Government, and the Health Secretary in particular, need to reel in the insults, and finally fund an NHS that works for everyone.

Without resident doctors, that’s impossible.

The show of solidarity across the country has been excellent. Now, it’s time for the Government to act.

In truth, the NHS is on a knife edge and this self-described ‘zombie cohort’ of junior doctors could really do with an injection of new life. I reinforce the point that professional wellbeing is inextricably linked to public health: the two are inseparable.

We cannot have good healthcare without a well-staffed, replenished NHS.

A version of this article was published March 15, 2023.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Ross.Mccafferty@metro.co.uk. 

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