Resident Doctors in the UK to Launch Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are set to begin a five-day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that junior physicians will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who constitute about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, urging the health minister to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste 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, keen for the minister to understand that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would see that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details are expected soon.
