By Rebecca Smith, Medical Editor
11:28AM BST 30 May 2012
The British Medical Association Council will now decide whether industrial action will go ahead. If it does, it will be the first time in 37 years that doctors have taken industrial action.
Ballot papers were sent to 104,000 doctors across the UK and there was a 50 per cent turnout.
The results show that 63 per cent of GPs voted yes, 73 per cent of consultants, 81 per cent of juniors, 76 per cent of staff and associate specialist doctors, 34 per cent of occupational health doctors and 60 per cent of public health specialists.
If the action goes ahead it is likely to involve doctors attending their normal workplace and providing all urgent and emergency care, but postponing non-urgent work for one or more 24-hour periods.
For GPs this would mean they would not take advanced bookings for appointments on the day of action but would be in their surgeries to see urgent cases.
For surgeons and hospital doctors it would mean cancelling non-urgent operations and appointments but all cancer surgery, tests and other life threatening conditions would still be treated.
Doctors must give their employers one week's notice of action and legally it must be held within four weeks, which puts the 24-hours of industrial action between June 6th and 27th.
The row is over proposed changes will mean doctors currently under 50 having to work to 68, and paying more for their pensions.
The top earning doctors would have to contribute 14 per cent of their salary to their pensions.
However critics have said many doctors retire on 'gold-plated' packages that would be worth £1m if bought privately.
Six separate ballots were sent out, one to each of the specialties.
They asked two questions; whether they were prepared to take part in industrial action short of a strike; and whether they were prepared to take part in a strike.
For maximum legal protection, BMA members were asked to vote yes to both questions if they wanted to take the action proposed, however this would not be an all out strike.
Occupational health doctors were the only group where the majority voted against industrial action.
Last week, Dr Laurence Buckman, chair of the BMA's GP committee, said the Coalition had "recklessly squandered" their goodwill with the changes after to pensions were only renegotiated four years ago.
Last night a spokesman for Remedy UK, which represents around 9,000 junior and middle grade doctors said doctors should ask themselves if taking action was "morally justifiable" or was "just futile posturing", said the spokesman.
"Going on strike will do the medical profession incredible harm."
Dean Royles, director of the NHS Employers organisation, said today: "As the BMA Council now meet I really want them to put patients at the centre of their decision making.
"They know that any industrial action will impact on care and cause distress and disruption to patients and undermine trust and confidence in the medical profession.
"We know that doctors are anxious about changes to their pensions. But no one wants to see patients dragged into the argument.
"Industrial action could potentially mean delays to treatment. It would be particularly distressing for patients and extremely worrying for staff who are dedicated to putting patients first.
"Its a tough decision for the BMA Council but they should do the right thing for patients.
"If they do decide to call doctors out on strike then the more notice employers get of this the more robust our contingency plans will be."
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