Resident Doctors in England to Begin Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Doctors in the UK are preparing to begin a five-day strike next month, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all medical staff 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 commented, “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 crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in England are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the minister to see that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the government would see that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience practicing in hospitals, based on their field, or up to three years in general practice.
More details will follow soon.
