Dr Stephen Vallely lends his support to junior doctors who are striking this week to highlight dangerous staffing levels
Your article (Critically ill patients ‘will inevitably die’ due to junior doctors’ strike, 4 April) is based on the views of three, admittedly eminent, cardiac doctors, but totally misses the point. Critically ill patients are dying every day because of the reckless underfunding of our health service by consecutive governments of whatever shade.
What the “junior” doctors – a phrase I despise to refer to individuals who have often dedicated 20-plus years to the health service – are trying to highlight is the dangerous staffing levels that the public are forced to experience in hospitals all over the UK, where patients with potential cancers wait for scans weeks beyond what they should have to, and the standard of care is, at best, barely tolerable. They are highlighting the fact that patients are dying needlessly every day.
