Resident Doctors in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in England are set to begin a five-day strike in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will strike for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
Causes of the Walkout
Dr Jack Fletcher stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, pressing the health secretary to resolve the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients endure long waits for care and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to understand that a deal offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, giving recent graduates 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 reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
Further information will follow soon.
