Resident Physicians in England to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month
Doctors in England are set to begin a five consecutive day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The BMA stated that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.
Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
Dr Jack Fletcher commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, pressing the health secretary to end the crisis of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals endure long waits for care and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to see that a agreement including options to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, giving recent graduates a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We trusted the government would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
Further information will follow soon.