Doctors in the UK are set to stage a five-day walkout in November, in protest over pay and employment.
The British Medical Association (BMA) announced that resident doctors will walk out for five consecutive days from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am.
Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all medical staff in the National Health Service, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the health department.
The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee stated, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with government, pressing the health secretary to end the scandal of unemployed physicians.”
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst countless individuals wait endlessly for treatment and shifts in hospitals go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.”
He continued, “We negotiated sincerely, hoping the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, providing recent graduates a pay increase of only £1 per hour for the next four years.”
“We trusted the government would see that our demands are not just fair but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our physicians departing from the health service.”
Junior physicians have anywhere up to eight years’ experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.
More details will follow soon.
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Elizabeth Alvarez
Elizabeth Alvarez
Elizabeth Alvarez