Resident Physicians in the UK to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month

Doctors in the UK are set to begin a five consecutive day strike in November, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.

Walkout Information

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 constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the health department.

Causes of the Walkout

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, pressing the health secretary to end 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 is a situation which cannot go on.”

He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to understand that a agreement including options to gradually reverse the pay reductions over a number of years, providing newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”

“We hoped the government would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our those we treat and would also help stop our physicians leaving the NHS.”

Who Are Resident Physicians?

Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or as many as three years in primary care.

Further information are expected soon.