Resident Doctors in the UK to Begin Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in England are set to stage a five consecutive day strike next month, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that junior physicians will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am 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 spent the last week in talks with government, urging the health minister to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the minister to see that a deal including options to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the government would recognize 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 departing from the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or as many as three years in primary care.
Further information will follow soon.
