All out strike will ‘damage trust in doctors’, Keogh warns

Junior doctors risk damaging the public’s trust in the medical profession if they go ahead with the all-out strike planned for the end of April, according to Sir Bruce Keogh, the national medical director of NHS England.

Writing for the Observer, Keogh described this as a ‘watershed moment’ for the NHS and put forward fears that the next walk outs, which will include emergency cover, ‘will put our sickest, most vulnerable patients at greater risk’.

While defending people’s ‘fundamental right to withdrawer ones labour’, Keogh cautioned that ‘the recent strikes have caused distress, anxiety and confusion for thousands of patients’.

According to Keogh, the medical profession is firmly rooted in a strong set of values and a principle of ‘first do no harm’, and he suggests that the escalation of the industrial action could lead to immediate and long lasting consequences.

He warns doctors that they ‘risk crossing the line’ by withdrawing emergency cover, which he claims could ‘irreparably damage this trust and the reputation of our profession’.

Keogh finishes by urging junior doctors to ‘dig deep and ask whether such action is fair to patients or compatible with the values and privilege of being a doctor’.