Junior Doctors in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Strike in November
Medical professionals in the UK are set to begin a five consecutive day strike in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will strike for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with government, urging 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 millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to see that a deal including options 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 hoped the authorities would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians departing from the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in general practice.
Further information will follow soon.