Resident Doctors in the UK to Begin Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month

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

Walkout Information

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

Junior physicians, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks with the government.

Reasons Behind the Strike

Dr Jack Fletcher 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 struggling to find jobs, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients endure long waits for care and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This cannot continue.”

He added, “We talked with the government in good faith, hoping the health secretary to see that a deal offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over several years, providing recent graduates a raise of only £1 per hour for the next 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 doctors departing from the NHS.”

Who Are Resident Physicians?

Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or as many as three years in primary care.

More details will follow soon.