Junior Physicians in the UK to Stage Five Consecutive Day Walkout Next Month

Doctors in the UK are set to stage a five-day strike next month, in protest over pay and employment.

Walkout Information

The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.

Junior physicians, who make up about half of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action 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 been negotiating for the past week with government, pressing the health secretary to resolve the scandal of unemployed physicians.”

“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians in England are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This is a situation which cannot go on.”

He added, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to see that a deal including options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”

“We hoped the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors leaving the NHS.”

About Resident Doctors

Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.

More details will follow shortly.