Junior Doctors in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in the UK are set to begin a five-day strike next month, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks 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 officials, pressing the health minister to resolve 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 skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our doctors leaving the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
More details are expected shortly.
