Junior Doctors in the UK to Begin Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are set to begin a five consecutive day strike in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA stated that resident doctors will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who make up about half of all medical staff 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 commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, pressing the health secretary to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals 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, hoping the health secretary to understand that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of only £1 per 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 community and our those we treat and would also help prevent our doctors departing from the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
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 shortly.
