Resident Doctors in the UK to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in England are set to begin a five-day strike next month, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute 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 stated, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, urging the health secretary to end the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the health secretary to understand that a deal 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 trusted the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details are expected shortly.
