Junior Physicians in the UK to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in the UK are set to begin a five-day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
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.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all doctors in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations 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 spent the last week in talks with government, pressing the health secretary to end the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“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 shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to understand that a deal including options to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians leaving the NHS.”
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.
More details will follow shortly.
