Junior Doctors in England to Begin Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November
Medical professionals in the UK are preparing to begin a five-day walkout in November, due to disputes regarding jobs and pay.
Walkout Information
The British Medical Association (BMA) stated that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to November 19 at 7am.
Resident doctors, who make up about half of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after unsuccessful talks with the government.
Causes of the Walkout
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, pressing the health minister to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals remain vacant. This cannot continue.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the minister to see that a deal including options to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our patients and would also help stop our physicians leaving the NHS.”
About Resident Doctors
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in general practice.
More details will follow shortly.
