Resident Doctors in England to Launch 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.
Walkout Information
The BMA announced that resident doctors will strike for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who make up about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
Dr Jack Fletcher stated, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, pressing the health minister to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in England are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients endure long waits for care and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the government would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help prevent our doctors departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in primary care.
Further information will follow soon.
