Resident Doctors in England to Launch Five-Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day strike in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all medical staff in the NHS, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
Dr Jack Fletcher stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, pressing the health secretary to end the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in England are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals endure long waits for care and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the health secretary to understand that a deal offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the government would recognize that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
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.
