"It's sad it has come to this. I would much rather be treating patients," one doctor admits as he stands on the picket line outside the Manchester Royal Infirmary.
"I work in trauma and orthopaedic surgery, I would much rather be seeing patients in the clinic, helping with operations, but unfortunately, we have been driven to be here, as a last resort, by the government," he says.
Mike Greenalgh, 33, is just one of more than 80,000 junior doctors in the NHS, which make up almost half of the health service's medical workforce. Among that figure are 60,000 doctors eligible to strike, many of whom were lining pickets across the country's major hospitals this morning.
