Junior Doctors in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are set to stage a five-day strike in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that junior physicians will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all doctors in the National Health Service, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the health department.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with government, pressing the health secretary to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in the UK 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, keen for the health secretary to understand that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in primary care.
Further information will follow soon.
