Resident Physicians in England to Begin Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in England are preparing to begin a five consecutive day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who make up nearly 50% of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the health department.
Reasons Behind the Strike
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, 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 millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He added, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the health secretary to understand that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a raise of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”
“We hoped the government would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians departing from the health service.”
Who Are Resident Physicians?
Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or up to three years in primary care.
More details will follow shortly.
