Resident Doctors in England to Stage Five-Day Strike Next Month
Doctors in England are preparing to begin a five-day strike next month, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The BMA announced that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, urging the health secretary to resolve the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in England are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to understand that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, providing newly trained doctors a raise of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our doctors leaving the NHS.”
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 shortly.
