Resident Doctors in England to Launch Five-Day Walkout in November
Doctors in England are set to stage a five-day strike in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The BMA stated that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
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.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in England are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the government would recognize that our asks are not just fair but are in the interest of the community and our patients and would also help prevent our doctors leaving the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in primary care.
More details will follow soon.
