Resident Doctors in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in the UK are preparing to stage a five consecutive day walkout next month, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced 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 make up about half of all doctors in the National Health Service, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
Dr Jack Fletcher commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with government, pressing the health secretary to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst countless individuals endure long waits for care and hospital shifts remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to see that a deal including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing recent graduates a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the community and our patients and would also help stop our doctors departing from the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details will follow soon.
