THOUSANDS of junior doctors are set to launch four days of strike action today, as their union reported that some are paid as little as £14.09 for life-saving operations.

Pickets were expected at hospitals across England and the widespread public support shown during the doctors’ three days of strike action in March looks likely to be repeated.

On the eve of the strike their union the British Medical Association (BMA) reported that three junior doctors could collectively be paid just £66.55 for removing an appendix – £28 for a doctor with 10 years’ experience, £24.46 with seven years’ experience and £14.09 with one year’s experience.

The BMA reported one junior doctor saying: “There is nothing ‘junior’ about the work I have done.”

Dr Jennifer Barclay, a surgical doctor in north-west England, said: “I’ll be trying to focus on steady, controlled hand movements, thinking about the next steps and communicating with the rest of the team.

“Meanwhile, my bleep is going off incessantly in the background with more and more patients waiting to be seen as soon as I get out of theatre. For that hour of work, that might save a life, I can be paid £19.

“Surely this life, the training, responsibility, debt and crushing workload is worth more than £19 per hour? I’ll be on the picket line this week because doctors believe that it is.”

Dr Robert Laurenson and Dr Vivek Trivedi, BMA junior doctors’ committee co-chairs, said: “It is appalling that this government feels that paying three junior doctors as little as £66.55 between them for work of this value is justified.

“This is highly skilled work requiring years of study and intensive training in a high-pressure environment where the job can be a matter of life and death.”

The doctors want a 35 per cent pay rise to bring their income back to the level it stood at in 2008, two years before the Tories came to power. The BMA said the increase would help resolve a crisis in recruitment and retention of staff.

The BMA says doctors want to resolve 15 years of “pay erosion,” with junior doctors losing more than 25 per cent of their pay in real terms.

Health Secretary Steve Barclay has dismissed the claim as “unrealistic" with NHS leaders warning the strike will result in tens of thousands of cancelled operations and appointments.

The BMA has countered that when there is no strike action tens of thousands of operations are cancelled every year due to underfunding, understaffing and running down of the NHS by the government. The NHS is short of 140,000 staff, including 47,000 nurses.

The BMA said it was prepared to negotiate up to the very minute the strike begins, including over the Easter Bank Holiday weekend, asking simply for a “credible offer.”

The government has refused, saying it will not negotiate unless the strike is called off.

BMA Junior Doctors Committee co-chair Dr Mike Greenhalgh said: “It’s hard to negotiate when only one side is doing it and we’re not getting anything back from the government on that front.”

Dr Greenhalgh apologised to patients whose operations or appointments are cancelled due to the strike and said patient safety would not be put at risk.

“Patient safety was maintained at the last strikes and it will be in these strikes,” he said.

The NHS waiting list for treatment had risen to seven million due to government underfunding and staffing shortages before any strike action took place.