Resident Physicians in England to Launch Five-Day Strike Next Month
Doctors in England are set to stage a five-day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
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 officials, urging the health secretary to end the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients endure long waits for care and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to see that a deal including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the community and our patients and would also help prevent our doctors departing from the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in primary care.
Further information will follow shortly.
