NHS consultants will be balloted over strike action next month, the British Medical Association has announced.
Senior doctors will vote from May 15 on whether to strike over pay in a move that could deepen the NHS crisis.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay has agreed to pay talks with the union to avert potential strike action.
It comes after more than 17,000 NHS consultants in England (86 per cent) voted decisively in favour of strike action in a consultative ballot.
In a separate dispute, junior doctor members of the British Medical Association (BMA) will stage a four-day strike next week that is expected to seriously disrupt NHS services.
Around 60,000 junior doctors in England will walk out for 96 hours from April 11 after talks broke down with Mr Barclay last week.
NHS trusts across the country will begin notifying patients on Monday of delays to treatment as a result of industrial action. The last junior doctors strike, held over three days in March, led to the cancellation or postponement of 175,000 procedures and appointments.
The disruption next week is likely to be particularly severe as it will follow the longer Easter weekend, when more NHS staff are likely to be on leave.
In a letter to the Sunday Times, the chief executives of England’s ten biggest teaching hospitals warned that the industrial action would cause “significant distress and delays” for patients and urged both sides to open pay talks immediately.
The Shelford Group, which includes hospital leaders in London, Oxford and Manchester, said the strikes would be disruptive “on a scale significantly beyond that of previous rounds of industrial action”.
They wrote: “We estimate we will postpone tens of thousands of clinic appointments, diagnostic tests and operations in our ten trusts alone; national figures will greatly exceed this.”
The BMA is seeking a pay rise of 26 per cent for junior doctors to restore a real-terms fall in income since 2008. A Foundation Year 1 doctor earns around £29,000 per year, rising to £34,000 a year later.
Speaking after the consultative ballot for consultants, Dr Vishal Sharma, chair of the BMA consultants committee, said: “In my 25 years in the NHS, I have never seen consultants more demoralised, frustrated and in despair over this Government’s refusal to support the NHS workforce and the patients they serve.
“The Government is refusing to listen to consultants’ concerns, driving many out of the NHS entirely.
“Things will only worsen unless we take a stand.”
