Resident Physicians in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in England are set to begin a five-day walkout next month, in protest over pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who make up about half of all doctors in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the health department.
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 government, urging the health minister to end the scandal 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 countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, providing recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details are expected soon.
