Junior Doctors in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in England are preparing to begin a five-day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that resident doctors will strike for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all doctors in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks 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 been negotiating for the past week with government, pressing the health secretary to end the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused 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 minister to see that a deal including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the government would see 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 prevent our doctors leaving the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in general practice.
More details will follow soon.