Junior Doctors in England to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in England are preparing to stage a five consecutive day strike in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The BMA stated that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Junior physicians, who constitute about half of all doctors in the National Health Service, 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 50% of second-year physicians in England are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals endure long waits for care and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to see that a agreement including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, giving recent graduates a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians leaving the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in general practice.
More details will follow shortly.
