Junior Doctors in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month
Doctors in the UK are preparing to stage a five consecutive day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that resident doctors will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who make up nearly 50% of all doctors 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 commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, urging the health minister to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors 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 including options to gradually reverse the pay reductions over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the community and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details will follow soon.
