Junior Physicians in the UK to Launch Five-Day Walkout Next Month

Doctors in the UK are preparing to stage a five-day strike in November, in protest over pay and employment.

Strike Details

The BMA announced that junior physicians will strike for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.

Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.

Reasons Behind the Strike

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 minister to resolve the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”

“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts remain vacant. This cannot continue.”

He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the minister to understand that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the coming four years.”

“We hoped the authorities would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our doctors leaving the health service.”

About Resident Doctors

Resident doctors 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 will follow soon.