The NHS is ‘effectively on fire’ according to a junior doctor at the Cumberland Infirmary as junior doctors begin their unprecedented 96-hour strike.

Hundreds of junior doctors who are members of the British Medical Association (BMA) across North and West Cumbria have taken strike action and will walk out until 7am on Saturday, April 15.

The BMA wants a 35 per cent pay rise for junior doctors which they say would make up for ‘15 years of below-inflation wage rises’ which has caused a ‘recruitment and retention crisis’ in the NHS.

The NHS is currently facing a number of problems and a striking A&E doctor at the Cumberland Infirmary has said that the ‘system is broken’.

“The NHS is effectively on fire,” said Dr Tom Hepburn.

“We've got chronic shortages of staff across all domains; morale is at an all-time low after 15 years of chronic cuts and the underfunding of services and the shutting down of community beds.

“We've got half as many beds in the country as we did 15 years ago, which obviously has a knock-on effect on discharges.”

“We've got patients with us in A&E for days sometimes waiting for a bed. We are going out to ambulances who aren't able to offload their patients because there's no space in A&E.

“We're going onto the ambulances, diagnosing people and then effectively either discharging people or admitting them without them having ever even set foot into the hospital, which is bonkers.

“We’ve had suspected heart attacks that will just wait in the ambulance. We just physically couldn't get them in because everything was full. What are you meant to do?”

Strike action by junior doctors comes at a time when the NHS is seeing ‘peak’ demand.

A statement from the NHS Foundation Trusts in the North East and North Cumbria said: “Junior doctors are a vital and much valued part of the NHS workforce and to have such a big part of our teams missing is a deep worry for us all.  The pressure on services is already at peak with no let-up in demand.”

Despite the unprecedented strike action by junior doctors, Dr Hepburn said that morale was high amongst staff and that more strike action could be on the way if no progress is made.

“It's unfortunate, and we wish we weren't at this point, but the government could have at any point agreed to sit around the table and give the BMA a credible offer to start negotiating.

“We've had a 26% real term pay cut, and we don't think that with everything that's gone on with covid, with the increasing workload and stress and burnout, that doctors are worth 26 per cent less than they were 15 years ago.

“We're asking for pay to come back in line with what it was 15 years ago which works out to be a 35 per cent increase which would put a junior doctor who's just qualified on £19 an hour rather than £14 an hour.

“There's no point in half-heartedly doing this strike because if we falter now, then it means that the disruption caused by this round and last round will be for absolutely nothing.

“We need to reach some sort of credible improvement in pay to stop the outflow of doctors to other countries and for future of the profession.”

The Health Secretary said he had hoped to begin formal pay negotiations with the BMA last month but said its demand for a 35% pay rise was "unreasonable."