Junior Doctors in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are set to stage a five consecutive day walkout in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
Dr Jack Fletcher commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, urging the health secretary 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 millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to see that a agreement including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, giving recent graduates a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the government would see that our asks are not just fair but are in the best interests of the community and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
Further information are expected shortly.
