Resident Doctors in the UK to Stage Five-Day Strike in November

Medical professionals in England are set to begin a five consecutive day walkout next month, in protest over pay and employment.

Walkout Information

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

Resident doctors, who constitute about half of all medical staff in the NHS, are proceeding with the strike after failed negotiations with the government.

Reasons Behind the Strike

Dr Jack Fletcher commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have been negotiating for the past week with officials, urging the health minister to resolve the scandal of doctors going unemployed.”

“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, 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, keen for the health secretary to see that a deal offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over a number of years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the coming four years.”

“We trusted the government 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 doctors departing from the NHS.”

About Resident Doctors

Resident doctors have anywhere up to eight years’ experience practicing in hospitals, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.

More details will follow soon.