Junior Doctors in England to Begin Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in England are preparing to begin a five-day strike in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike 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, urging the health minister to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals 50% of second-year physicians in the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the minister to understand that a deal offering solutions to slowly restore 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 government would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians leaving the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
Further information are expected soon.
