Resident Doctors in the UK to Begin Five-Day Walkout in November

Doctors in England are set to stage a five-day strike next month, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.

Walkout Information

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

Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.

Causes of the Walkout

The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, pressing the health secretary to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”

“Our survey reveals half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This cannot continue.”

He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the minister to understand that a deal including options to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, providing recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”

“We hoped the authorities would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the community and our patients and would also help prevent our physicians leaving the health service.”

Who Are Resident Physicians?

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.

More details are expected shortly.