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Medical professionals in the UK are set to stage a five-day strike next month, due to disputes regarding pay and employment.

Walkout Information

The BMA announced that resident doctors will walk out for five days in a row from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November.

Junior physicians, who make up nearly 50% of all doctors in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.

Reasons Behind the Strike

Dr Jack Fletcher commented, “We did not want to reach this point. We have spent the last week in talks with officials, urging the health secretary to end the crisis of doctors going unemployed.”

“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in the UK are facing unemployment, their skills going to waste whilst millions of patients 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 deal offering solutions to slowly restore the cuts to pay over a number of years, giving recent graduates a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.”

“We hoped the authorities would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the public and our those we treat and would also help prevent our doctors leaving the NHS.”

Who Are Resident Physicians?

Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience practicing in hospitals, based on their field, or as many as three years in general practice.

Further information will follow shortly.