Junior Physicians in England to Launch Five-Day Strike Next Month
Doctors in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day strike in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The BMA announced that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the health department.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, urging the health secretary to resolve the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the minister to see that a agreement including options to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the government would recognize that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in primary care.
Further information will follow shortly.
