Wigan<\/a> told the BMJ on the picket line in Manchester: “I see colleagues who are going to other countries or quitting the profession, entirely driven by a lack of jobs and worse pay than other competitive markets.<\/p>\n“Everyone in the NHS deserves to be paid fairly after years and years of austerity. It\u2019s not fair, and it\u2019s not right.”<\/p>\n
Dr Goyal also pointed to conditions on the ground, particularly in the North West. He said ‘chronic job shortages and poor staffing’ has led to a ‘permanent state of crisis’.<\/p>\n
“Patients in Liverpool, Manchester and surrounding areas see this every day in corridor care. Just a couple of days ago I was working on the bank holiday, and patients on the corridor were waiting over 12 hours to be seen by us,” he says. “I\u2019m sorry, but that\u2019s a failure by the government.”<\/p>\n
“None of us want to be on the picket line right now,” he adds. “I would rather be on an on-call shift back in my hospital in Aintree\u2026It’s not just time in the hospital that we lose.<\/p>\n
“I’m actually losing a significant amount of time to learn how to do surgery, and that’s going to stop me becoming the surgeon I want to be in the future.”<\/p>\n
Are strikes dangerous – or justified?<\/p>\n
The central tension in the dispute is whether strike action poses a risk to patients, or whether it is a necessary response to deeper problems.<\/p>\n
Health leaders say industrial action results in cancelled operations, growing waiting lists and mounting costs for the NHS. The government claims resident doctors’ strikes have cost NHS hospitals more than \u00a33bn over the past three years – a figure based on multiplying the estimated cost of \u00a350m a day for rescheduling operations and paying for temporary staff cover by the total number of strike days since 2023.<\/p>\n
Political figures have gone further, with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch calling for doctors to be banned from striking altogether. Mrs Badenoch said the BMA was ‘betraying the patients that its members swore to serve’.<\/p>\n
“If the BMA refuses to act reasonably, the Government must step in to ensure the safety of patients,” she wrote in the Daily Mail. “That\u2019s why I will ban resident doctors and consultants from going on strike – as we already do for the police and armed forces. We will reintroduce minimum service levels across the NHS, so that all patients know the NHS will always be there when they need it.”<\/p>\n
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Patients have been warned of busy reduced emergency services amid resident doctors’ strike action(Image: PA)<\/p>\n
But doctors insist safeguards are in place. “In terms of emergency care, all our consultants are stepping down and taking over the roles,” Dr Goyal explains. “We know that strike action is safe.”<\/p>\n
Health officials, however, say strike action is only now safe because NHS staff step in to mitigate the impact, which puts further financial strain on the service.<\/p>\n
During resident doctor strikes in England, senior consultants are covering essential shifts. According to The Royal College of Emergency Medicine, ‘everything works better than usual’ in A&Es during some of the strikes, when specialists instead of newly-qualified doctors see patients first.<\/p>\n
But for the patients facing cancelled operations and appointments, things arguably don’t feel ‘better than usual’ during strike action. To that, Dr Goyal says he ‘shares that frustration’.<\/p>\n
“Nobody happily makes the decision to strike,” he says. “There is definitely disruption and I apologise to patients who are going to have to wait more time in the waiting list and have had their operations or clinics cancelled.”<\/p>\n
“We understand that the public is frustrated and quite frankly, we share that frustration,” he adds. “Nobody wants to be standing on the picket line.”<\/p>\n
Is it about more than money?<\/p>\n
After 11 rounds of strike action, the BMA reached a deal with the government in September 2024, but re-entered formal dispute in April last year, with accusations from the union of a ‘sub-inflationary pay uplift’ in the proposed offer.<\/p>\n
The BMA is now seeking a 26 per cent pay rise for resident doctors to be spread over several years. Basic pay for resident doctors working a 40-hour week is currently between \u00a338,831 and \u00a373,992 a year, depending on experience.<\/p>\n
Dr Goyal says these figures overlook the personal cost and time invested in becoming a doctor.<\/p>\n
![\"Resident](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776423468_125_0_Resident-Doctors-Take-Part-In-New-Round-Of-BMA-Strikes.jpg\")
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The BMA accused ministers of using career development as a pawn in the ongoing pay dispute(Image: Getty Images)<\/p>\n
“I work around 40 to 50 hours a week. That’s my time of working, but in reality, I come home and I have to prepare for my examinations, I have to do audits, I have to do research, I have to undertake leadership and teaching activities,” he explains.<\/p>\n
“In the last year, I spent around \u00a34,000 on my examinations and all the resources required to study for examinations – and this all comes out of pocket. Each examination requires around 200 hours of preparation.<\/p>\n
“A resident doctor may be a 50-hour weekly job, but it is actually much more than that.”<\/p>\n
The BMA also argues that recent pay increases do not keep pace with inflation. Independent analysis by The Nuffield Trust found that pay has fallen slightly since 2008 when measured using CPI inflation, but much more sharply when using RPI – the measure the BMA prefers, partly because it is used to calculate student loan interest.<\/p>\n
An uncertain road ahead<\/p>\n
Resident doctors are set to remain on strike until 6.59am on Monday (April 13). Health leaders across Greater Manchester are anticipating a busy weekend will put ‘extra pressure on the hospital teams’.<\/p>\n
The NHS is asking people to only call 999 or go to A&E for life-threatening conditions such as chest pain, severe bleeding, difficulty breathing, or symptoms of stroke.<\/p>\n
But what comes after the strikes?<\/p>\n
“The only way we can solve this situation is if the government comes back to the table and gives a credible offer,” Dr Goyal says.<\/p>\n
The government, meanwhile, argues it is constrained by wider NHS budgets and cannot meet the BMA’s demands. That fundamental disagreement – between affordability and what doctors see as necessary investment in the health system – remains unresolved.<\/p>\n
A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said: “It is disappointing for patients and staff alike that the BMA has decided to press ahead with strikes this week, despite the deal we put to them which would have seen resident doctors 35.2% better off, on average, than they were four years ago.<\/p>\n
“Our attention and that of leaders across the NHS is now on protecting patients and staff by minimising disruption to the health service.<\/p>\n
“Thanks to the dedication of talented NHS staff, the health service delivered almost 95% of planned activity during December strikes, and we want to reassure patients that the NHS will be there for you when you need it this time too.<\/p>\n
“Our heartfelt thanks go out to all those hard at work this week.”<\/p>\n
With the BMA’s mandate for industrial action running until at least August, and the possibility of further walkouts already being discussed, the dispute appears far from over.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“None of us want to be on the picket line right now,” says Dr Kartik Goyal, Core Surgical…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":535825,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[2863,102,2960,104,56,54,55,112864],"class_list":["post-535824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-department-of-health","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-nhs","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-unmissable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=535824"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/535824\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/535825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=535824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=535824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=535824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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