Resident Physicians in England to Begin Five-Day Walkout in November
Doctors in the UK are preparing to stage a five consecutive day strike in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced 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 doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with government, urging the health minister to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the health secretary to understand that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, giving newly trained doctors a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”
“We hoped the government would see that our asks are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians departing from the NHS.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
Further information will follow shortly.
