Junior Doctors in England to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Doctors in England are preparing to begin a five-day strike in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that junior physicians will strike for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who make up about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks 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 officials, urging the health secretary to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the minister to see that a agreement including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the government would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our doctors leaving the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors 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 are expected soon.
