Resident Doctors in the UK to Launch Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to begin a five consecutive day strike next month, in protest over jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The BMA announced that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, pressing the health minister to resolve the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to understand that a deal offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the government would recognize that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in primary care.
Further information will follow shortly.
