Hospitals braced for first all-out doctors' strike (UK)

Hospitals in England are braced for the first all-out doctors' strike in the NHS's history on Tuesday.

Junior doctors will walk out of both routine and emergency care from 08:00 to 17:00 BST in the contract row.

It is the first time services such as A&E, maternity and intensive care have been hit in the long-running dispute.

NHS bosses believe plans are in place to ensure care will be safe, but say the situation will be monitored closely during the stoppage.

NHS England said "military level" contingency planning had been carried out to protect urgent and emergency care.

The postponement of nearly 13,000 routine operations and more than 100,000 appointments to free up staff

Redeployment of consultants, middle-grade doctors and nurses into emergency care

An increase in 111 staff rostered on to allow the phone service to handle more calls

There was a doctors' strike Canada in 1962 when gov't of Saskatchewan put universal medical in place.

Here's a quote from Wiki:

The 1962 Saskatchewan doctors' strike was a 23-day labour action exercised by medical doctors in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan in an attempt to force the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation government of Saskatchewan to rescind its program of universal medical insurance. The strike began on July 1, 1962, the day the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Act took force, and ended July 23, 1962.

The doctor's lost the battle, but won the war. They went on to form the Canadian Medical Protective Association (CMPA), to which 95% of Canadian doctors belong, memberships paid for by Jean Q. Publique via rebates paid for by provincial governments to individual doctors (rates vary between provinces) - it works sort of like malpractice insurance. They'll pay up in a flash if, say, the doctor cuts off the wrong leg at the knee after an accident. But short of that sort of catastrophe they'll fight like mad, in extreme cases spending enormous amounts to fight a pittance of a settlement already offered.

I asked my GP about it when I first heard of it. He said he was occasionally asked to serve as expert witness in a trial. He thought it was a great organization.

They do other things as well, such as providing training upgrades in areas of emerging need and also providing specialist certification - not like specialists certified by Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, or American Board of Medical Specialties.

Here's the CMPA's home page:

Protecting the professional integrity of physicians and promoting safe medical care in Canada.

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