Resident Doctors in England to Begin Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in England are set to stage a five-day strike in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that junior physicians will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who make up nearly 50% of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “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 crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“Our survey reveals 50% of second-year physicians in England are facing unemployment, 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 added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to understand that a deal offering solutions to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing recent graduates a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the government would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians leaving the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in primary care.
Further information will follow soon.
