Junior Doctors in England to Launch Five-Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day strike next month, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will strike for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, urging the health minister to end the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to understand that a deal offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over a number of years, giving newly trained doctors a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the government would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors departing from the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
More details are expected shortly.
