Junior Doctors in the UK to Stage Five-Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The BMA announced that junior physicians will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with government, urging the health minister to end the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in England are struggling to find jobs, 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 continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to understand that a deal including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors leaving the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
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 general practice.
Further information will follow shortly.
