Resident Physicians in England to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in England are preparing to stage a five-day strike next month, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will strike for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who make up about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action 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 officials, urging the health minister to resolve the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. 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 cuts to pay over a number of years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would recognize that our asks 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
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
Further information will follow soon.
