Junior Doctors in the UK to Begin Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in the UK are set to stage a five-day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who make up about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.
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 end the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals 50% of second-year physicians in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the health secretary to understand that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the community and our patients and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
Further information are expected soon.
