Junior Doctors in England to Begin Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day walkout next month, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that junior physicians will strike for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
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 officials, urging the health minister to end the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“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 millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to understand that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the government would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in primary care.
More details will follow shortly.
