‘I am sleep-deprived, overworked and deserve more’

Doctors on a hospital picket line have accused the government of refusing to respond to “reasonable demands” over pay and conditions.

A five-day walkout by resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, began at 07:00 GMT.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he had responded to demands from the British Medical Association for higher pay and more specialist training places.

However, Dr Heather Gunn, who is doing foundation training at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, said the shortage of specialty places meant she feared being unemployed.

Competition for specialist training, which follows medical school and two-year foundation training, has soared in recent years.

Thirty thousand applicants applied for 10,000 places in 2025, partly due to increased overseas applicants, the Department of Health has said.

Dr Gunn, who is in the final year of foundation training in paediatric surgery, said she could be unemployed within months.

Speaking on the picket line in Oxford, she said: “I’m sleep-deprived, I’m overworked but I’m here because Mr Streeting refuses to give doctors what they deserve.

“I do not want to be strike, I want to be at work helping my colleagues.

“Unfortunately the reality is that many doctors like myself face the prospect of not having a job.

“So this time next year I may be at the job centre… because the government does not believe that training places are important enough.”

The government has said it would bring forward emergency legislation to fix the “choked recruitment system”.

It said it would create 4,000 more specialty training places and prioritise UK-trained graduates.

Mr Streeting added: “The government has done everything it can, from a 28.9% pay rise… and with a package on jobs, to avert this strike action.”

Dr Matt Bilton, a hospital psychiatrist on the picket line in Oxford, said: “The government… put an offer this past week but it was too little, too late, and so unfortunately we have no alternative.”

The BMA said resident doctors’ pay was a fifth lower than it was in 2008, taking inflation into account.

The strike is the 14th walkout by resident doctors in a long-running dispute over pay and other issues.

Steve McManus, the chief executive of the Royal Berkshire NHS Trust in Reading, said staff had become “well-versed” with dealing with the strikes.

He said about 350 appointments would need to be rescheduled for every day of the strike, which equated to about 5% of the cases hospital staff would normally see on a daily basis.

“We will work really hard to get those patients rescheduled as soon as we possibly can as we go into the New Year,” he said.

“But it clearly does have an impact on those patients and their families.”