Junior Doctors in England to Stage Five Consecutive Day Strike Next Month

Medical professionals in England are set to stage a five-day strike in November, in protest over pay and employment.

Strike Details

The BMA stated that junior physicians will walk out for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to 7am on 19 November.

Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all doctors in the National Health Service, are proceeding with the strike after unsuccessful talks 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 government, pressing the health secretary to end the crisis of unemployed physicians.”

“Our survey reveals 50% of second-year physicians in the UK are struggling to find jobs, their talents being unused whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts remain vacant. This cannot continue.”

He added, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the cuts to pay over several years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”

“We trusted the authorities would recognize that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the community and our patients and would also help stop our doctors departing from the NHS.”

About Resident Doctors

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

Further information will follow shortly.