Resident Doctors in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to begin a five consecutive day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, urging the health secretary to end the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the health secretary to understand that a deal offering solutions to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving recent graduates a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the government would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our doctors departing from the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, based on their field, or as many as three years in general practice.
Further information will follow soon.
