Junior Physicians in the UK to Stage Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to begin a five consecutive day strike in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that junior physicians will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute 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, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, pressing the health secretary to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“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 shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to understand that a deal including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the government would recognize that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience practicing in hospitals, based on their field, or as many as three years in primary care.
Further information will follow soon.
