Resident Doctors in England to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are set to stage a five-day strike next month, in protest over pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The BMA announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the health department.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with government, urging the health secretary to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in England are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients endure long waits for care and hospital shifts remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to understand that a deal offering solutions to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the interest of the community and our those we treat and would also help stop 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 general practice.
More details are expected shortly.