Claiming NHS strike won't harm patients is naive, experts warn: Doctors told they must 'ensure' patient safety is not compromised when they walk out next week

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Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned that strike action will 'harm vulnerable patients'

Doctors are 'naive' if they believe they can strike without harming patients, researchers said last night.

A study of medical walkouts around the world found that death rates do not increase when doctors down tools – as long as adequate emergency safeguards are in place.

But the Harvard team led by a British surgeon warned that doctors must 'ensure' that patient safety is not compromised when they take industrial action.

Their report in the British Medical Journal comes as 37,000 junior doctors are set to strike next Tuesday followed by two more walkouts on December 8 and 16.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt has warned that the action will 'harm vulnerable patients'.

In the new analysis, experts from Harvard Medical School in the US found that patients have not come to serious harm during previous medical industrial action.

In some cases death rates actually fell but this was probably because elective operations were cancelled, allowing hospitals to concentrate on urgent cases.

The strikes were backed by 98 per cent of those who voted in an escalating row with the Government over new contracts.

Junior doctors will only carry out emergency care next Tuesday but there will be full walkouts on the other two days with senior doctors having to cover urgent cases.

The research team was led by David Metcalfe, an expert in trauma surgery at University Hospital Coventry, who is on a Fulbright scholarship at Harvard.

The strikes were backed by 98 per cent of those who voted in an escalating row with the Government over new contracts. Junior doctors will only carry out emergency care next Tuesday but there will be full walkouts on the other two days with senior doctors having to cover urgent cases (stock photograph)

They wrote: 'Doctors must carefully balance their duties to patients with their rights as individuals.

'Previous strikes have shown that it is possible to disrupt elective services while ensuring that emergencies are treated promptly and effectively.

'It would, nevertheless, be naive to imagine that industrial action can be undertaken without causing any harm to patients.

'Some doctors will always feel that industrial action is fundamentally inconsistent with their professional obligations because of its inevitable impact on patients.

'However, patients do not come to serious harm during industrial action provided that provisions are made for emergency care.'

The academics analysed the last British doctors' strike in 2012 in a dispute over pensions. But that was largely viewed as a damp squib, with the Government estimating only 8 per cent took part.

The researchers also warned: 'Service disruption can be substantial, even when comparatively few doctors participate, as in 2012.

'Although elective admissions fell by only 12.8 per cent, outpatient cancellations increased by 45.5 per cent on the day of the strike.'

The team also found no rise in deaths during a doctors' strike in Jerusalem in 1983, a nine-day strike in Spain in 1999 and a four-week walk-out in Croatia in 2003.

But there was increased mortality in South Africa during a 20-day strike in 2010. This walkout included both doctors and nurses and left only one hospital open for 5.5million people.

The British Medical Journal is editorially independent from the British Medical Association.