Junior doctors are kicking off five days of strike action this morning, in the face of both a bumper pay rise and serious warnings that vulnerable patients will suffer.

"Resident doctors", as they are now called, will take to picket lines across England from 7am, in the face of a last-ditch attempt by the Prime Minister to call them off.

Members of the public have been urged to come forward for NHS care during the walkout, and are being asked to attend appointments unless told they are cancelled.

GP surgeries will open as usual and urgent care and A&E will continue to be available, alongside NHS 111, NHS England confirmed.

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In previous strikes, resident doctors, have been able to earn large sums by getting overtime rates to clear backlogs - though this time, the NHS has warned them that failing to show up could slow their career progression.

Last night, Sir Keir Starmer told the striking doctors their walkouts would "cause real damage" and that "everyone loses" if they fail to show up for work.

"The route the BMA Resident Doctors Committee have chosen will mean everyone loses.

"My appeal to resident doctors is this: do not follow the BMA leadership down this damaging road. Our NHS and your patients need you," Starmer wrote in The Times.

"Most people do not support these strikes. They know they will cause real damage.

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"Behind the headlines are the patients whose lives will be blighted by this decision. The frustration and disappointment of necessary treatment delayed. And worse, late diagnoses and care that risks their long-term health.

"It's not fair on patients. It's not fair on NHS staff who will have to step in for cover for those taking action. And it is not fair on taxpayers.

"These strikes threaten to turn back the clock on progress we have made in rebuilding the NHS over the last year, choking off the recovery."

Health Secretary Wes Streeting, meanwhile, has vowed that the striking doctors must feel the "pain" of their actions.

In a call to NHS leaders unearthed by The Telegraph, Streeting said: "It is really important that these strikes are not pain free for resident doctors or the BMA (British Medical Association), because otherwise we will see broader contagion across the BMA and potentially broader contagion across the public sector."

On July 8, junior doctors voted to strike - despite being awarded an "inflation-busting" 5.4 per cent pay rise.

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The BMA said 55% of its 48,000 resident doctor members voted in the ballot with 90 per cent supporting industrial action.

Government calculations, meanwhile, have found that the doctors have received a 28.9 per cent real-terms pay rise over the last three years.

The BMA has argued that doctors' real-terms pay has fallen by around a fifth since 2008, and is pushing for full "pay restoration".

The union is taking out national newspaper adverts today as a result, saying it wants to "lay bare the significant pay difference between a resident doctor and their non-medically qualified assistants".

It said the adverts "make clear that while a newly qualified doctor's assistant is taking home over £24 per hour, a newly qualified doctor with years of medical school experience is on just £18.62 per hour".

Resident doctors are qualified doctors in clinical training.

They have completed a medical degree and can have up to nine years of working experience as a hospital doctor, depending on their speciality, or up to five years of working and gaining experience to become a GP.

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'They are disrupting care, ignoring patients and gambling with lives. This is a betrayal of the NHS and those who rely on it,' Shadow Health Secretary Stuart Andrew said

Streeting's Department of Health and Social Care called the BMA advertising campaign "disingenuous".

"Given their repeated use of debunked ways of measuring inflation to overstate their pay claims, it follows a pattern of deliberately misleading calculations from the BMA," a spokesman fumed.

And Stuart Andrew, the Shadow Health Secretary, added: "They handed out inflation-busting pay rises without reform, and now the BMA are back for more.

"They are disrupting care, ignoring patients and gambling with lives. This is a betrayal of the NHS and those who rely on it.

"The public deserves hospitals where the doctors are on the frontline rather than the picket line.

"But every day Labour refuses to stand up to union overreach, Britain moves closer to a health service run on the unions' terms rather than the patients'."