Junior Doctors in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in England are set to stage a five-day strike in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
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 crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the minister to understand that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, providing recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians departing from the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in general practice.
More details will follow soon.
