Junior doctors in Cambridgeshire to end six-day walkout today
They've been striking over a pay dispute with the government
Junior doctors in Cambridgeshire are preparing to return to work as the longest strikes in NHS history comes to an end.
Members of the British Medical Association (BMA) have been taking part in six days of industrial action since last Wednesday, including at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge.
The strike was down to a long-running pay dispute between the BMA and the government, who have junior doctors in England an average rise of 8.8% last summer, but medics said the rise was not enough.
Roshan Singh Rupra is the chair of the BMA East of England's doctors committee:
"We're 10,000 doctors short in this country; right now, there's 10,000 UK-trained doctors in Australia so we know where and why they're going, if we can restore the pay of doctors, this would go some way to tackling these challenges," he said.
"The biggest challenge is we're losing doctors all the time and having to plug gaps, and the way we plug gaps is to cover other doctors' work, so I could be doing the job of two or three doctors; that's an enormous burden.
"It is a great job and I loved my job as a training surgeon, but I made the decision to become a doctor about 15 years ago and at that time, how could anyone predict that pay would get cut so much over this period of time?"
Pressure on NHS staff and patients
At the start of the strike action, the NHS warned it could lead to the hardest start to a year it's faced.
The NHS in Nottinghamshire declared a critical incident amid pressure due to the strike.
During the strike Dr Callum Gardner, chief medical officer at the North West Anglia NHS Foundation Trust, said the Trust's hospitals "are already extremely busy, stretched and operationally impacted by the nationwide industrial action.
"We hope to keep any disruption to a minimum, but this is an extremely challenging time for us."