Striking resident doctors like me are sick of being scapegoated

Working as a resident doctor in the NHS is not for the faint hearted. 

It is an exercise in fire fighting and chaos management, with doctors moving constantly between crises. No sooner is one issue dealt with than we are pulled towards the next. 

On a recent night shift, a colleague was spat at by a patient. Another was subjected to sustained verbal and racial abuse. 

This is not unusual. It is part of the job, we are told; absorb it, move on, keep the system running. 

But I have to wonder if that advice to remain stoic, to soldier on, still applies when that antagonism is echoed, amplified, and legitimised from the very top.

Because while my colleagues and I go on strike today, it seems that is precisely what Wes Streeting is doing. 

The chaos no longer feels clinical; it’s political. It follows us onto the wards, into the corridors, into the silence between bleeps at three in the morning. 

In the past, I’ve observed that Streeting seems to view resident doctors as public enemy number one. That instead of choosing to negotiate with us fairly, he prefers to throw fuel on the fire. To force our hands in advocating for ourselves. 

That assessment now feels charitable. What we are witnessing is something more deliberate: a sustained bout of political posturing that does not merely misunderstand the workforce crisis, but actively worsens it. 

You cannot run a healthcare system on goodwill alone. You cannot retain a workforce by devaluing it. And you cannot fix a crisis by blaming those who are holding it together. 

Resident doctors are not striking because we are indulgent, as the Health Secretary seems to imply. 

We are striking because the system we work in is becoming untenable; for us, and for the patients we serve. For a multitude of reasons. 

We are told there is ‘no more money’ for pay restoration.  That this is restraint, realism, fiscal discipline.

In real terms, resident doctors’ pay has been eroded for over a decade. Meanwhile, in comparable countries, doctors are not only paid more, but are supported within systems that recognise training, retention, and progression as investments rather than costs. 

Here, it feels like we are expected to subsidise the NHS with our own labour; absorbing rising professional fees, exams, indemnity, and portfolio costs that run into the thousands each year, while earning £18.62 an hour if we’re a foundation year one doctor. 

This is not restraint. It is exploitation. 

And like any system built on that foundation, it is beginning to fracture. 

Doctors are leaving. 

And every one who departs the NHS represents not only a loss of labour, but a loss of public investment. Hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on training are exported abroad, subsidising other healthcare systems while ours runs increasingly on fumes. 

The response from the government has not been to stem this outflow. It has been to threaten those who remain. 

The latest reports that training places could be restricted if strike action continues reveal something deeply troubling. Training, the very mechanism by which the NHS sustains itself, is being positioned as a bargaining chip. 

Consider that for a moment. 

In the middle of a workforce crisis, with waiting lists soaring and staffing shortages entrenched, the proposed solution is to limit the pipeline of future doctors, unless current ones comply. 

Wes Streeting might call that negotiation. I call it what it really is: coercion.

And it exposes a fundamental contradiction: you cannot claim to prioritise patient care while simultaneously undermining the workforce that delivers it, both now and in the future. 

But the distortion does not end there. 

Alongside this, we are witnessing the rapid expansion of roles such as Physician Associates and Advanced Clinical Practitioners; often presented as solutions to workforce gaps.

In theory, multidisciplinary working is valuable. In reality, what is unfolding is far more concerning. 

Doctors, who undergo years of rigorous training, are increasingly being displaced, while less regulated and severely undertrained roles expand at pace, frequently operating far beyond their intended scope. 

In practical terms, this can lead to increases in reports of unsafe care, misdiagnoses, and inadequate supervision.

It creates a perverse situation where the system appears more willing to dilute standards than to properly support and retain its most highly trained staff. 

We are not just being underpaid. We are being structurally sidelined. 

And all the while, the rhetoric continues. 

We are labelled reckless, irresponsible, dangerous. We are depicted as holding patients to ransom. The language is not incidental; it shapes how the public sees us, and how patients treat us. 

So when a doctor is shouted at on a night shift, when abuse becomes normalised, when respect erodes, we do have to think about where that narrative begins. 

Because it does not start in the hospital. 

It starts in Westminster. 

What we are seeing now is a system under strain responding not with repair, but with deflection. Pay is suppressed. Training is threatened. Alternative roles are expanded without adequate safeguards. And the workforce at the centre of it all is recast as the problem. 

If Wes Streeting was once impulsively throwing fuel on the fire, he is now strategically tending it; feeding it, shaping it, and watching as it grows. 

The question is no longer whether the NHS is in crisis. 

It is whether those in power are willing to stop making it worse. 

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

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