Junior Doctors in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Strike in November
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day walkout in November, in protest over jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, urging the health secretary to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in England are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to understand that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, providing newly trained doctors a raise of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the government would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details will follow shortly.