Resident doctors’ focus on pay is doing untold damage to the NHS

NHS resident doctors, formerly referred to as junior doctors, on a picket line outside St Thomas’ hospital in London on 25 July, at the start of a five-day strike. Photograph: Tayfun Salcı/Zuma Press Wire/Shutterstock

As a retired doctor, now 80, I feel sad as I watch our resident doctors struggle to exert pressure on the government to increase their pay packet (Wes Streeting ‘thought he had struck deal to halt strike by doctors’, 27 July). This behaviour will have far-reaching consequences, which are unlikely to be beneficial either to the doctors or the country.

Clearly, the action will cause delays in treatment and probably unnecessary morbidity and mortality. This will make the NHS vulnerable to pressure from those who favour its abolition. Already, it has alienated large sections of the population whose support the doctors have always been able to count on previously.