Resident Doctors in England to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in England are preparing to begin a five-day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute about half of all doctors in the National Health Service, are taking this action after failed negotiations 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 government, urging the health minister to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients endure long waits for care and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to understand that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the pay reductions over a number of years, providing recent graduates a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the government would recognize that our asks are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors departing from the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in general practice.
More details are expected soon.
