Resident Doctors in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to stage a five consecutive day strike next month, in protest over pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, pressing the health secretary to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients endure long waits for care and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to understand that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, giving recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our asks are not just fair but are in the best interests of the community and our patients and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in primary care.
More details will follow soon.
