Junior Doctors in England to Launch Five-Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in England are set to stage a five-day walkout next month, in protest over jobs and pay.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that junior physicians will strike for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all medical staff in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
Dr Jack Fletcher commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, urging the health secretary to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians 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 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 just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the community and our patients and would also help prevent our doctors leaving the health service.”
About Resident Doctors
Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
More details will follow shortly.