Resident Doctors in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month
Doctors in the UK are set to stage a five consecutive day walkout next month, in protest over jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who make up about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, urging 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 wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the minister to understand that a deal including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors 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 reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, based on their field, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details are expected soon.
