Resident Physicians in England to Stage Five-Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in England are set to begin a five-day walkout next month, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
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 the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals endure long waits for care and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the minister to see that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the cuts to pay over several years, giving recent graduates a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the government would see 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 doctors departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
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 primary care.
More details are expected soon.
