Junior Doctors in the UK to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to begin a five-day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Strike Details
The BMA stated that junior physicians will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the National Health Service, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, pressing the health secretary to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to see that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details are expected soon.