Junior Physicians in England to Launch Five-Day Strike Next Month
Medical professionals in England are preparing to stage a five-day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.
Strike Details
The BMA announced that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all doctors in the National Health Service, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.
Reasons Behind the Strike
Dr Jack Fletcher commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, pressing the health minister to end the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, 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 talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to understand that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore 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 trusted the authorities would recognize that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help prevent our doctors departing from the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.
Further information are expected soon.
