Junior Doctors in the UK to Begin Five-Day Walkout Next Month
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day walkout next month, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that junior physicians will strike for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who make up about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the health department.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, urging the health secretary to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst countless individuals endure long waits for care and hospital shifts 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 including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, giving recent graduates a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our asks are not just fair but are in the best interests of the community and our patients and would also help stop our doctors departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
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.
