BMA ethics

SIR – I am a junior doctor who has worked in the NHS for more than two years. I know all too well that improvements can and need to be made. But not like this.

I was a member of the British Medical Association but did not vote for the strikes. I have participated in some and not others. I am agnostic about whether it is right for people in our profession to take this kind of action, but I can say that what is happening now is wrong.

I can forgive asking for an unrealistic 35 per cent pay rise as a negotiating tactic. I can understand walking away from the table when the offer is insufficient. But when the BMA in Scotland accepted a 12.4 per cent pay rise, then indicated it would refuse the same deal in England on ideological grounds, it lost all credibility.

By launching the longest strike in NHS history and escalating an evidently political crusade amid record excess deaths, it has breached ethical standards and further risked the profession’s reputation. If it continues, there will have been normal hospital service for just six days in the 22 between December 18 and January 8 – with four of those at minimal staffing levels due to annual leave.

Are the strikes contributing to the record excess deaths? Perhaps. Will they be causing disruption to provision of care? Definitely. Leading to patient harm? Increasingly likely. And if they have not already, they inevitably will. The principle of “do no harm” is not currently the first, second or even third consideration of this campaign.

The BMA must consider what cost it is willing to incur. If we lose the trust and goodwill of the public we purport to serve, and the patients whose interests we are sworn to prioritise, any victory will be a pyrrhic one.

JA Murray Leeds, West Yorkshire