Junior Doctors in the UK to Launch Five-Day Walkout in November
Doctors in the UK are set to stage a five consecutive day strike in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the National Health Service, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
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 officials, pressing the health secretary to end 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 go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, providing recent graduates a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our demands 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 health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in general practice.
Further information will follow shortly.
