Resident Doctors in the UK to Launch Five Consecutive Day Walkout in November

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

Strike Details

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

Resident doctors, who constitute nearly 50% of all medical staff in the NHS, are taking this action after failed negotiations with the government.

Causes of the Walkout

The chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee commented, “This is not where we wanted to be. We have been negotiating for the past week with government, pressing the health secretary to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.”

“We know from our own survey 50% of second-year physicians 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, keen for the health secretary to see that a agreement offering solutions to slowly restore the pay reductions over a number of years, giving recent graduates a raise of just a pound an 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 community and our patients and would also help stop our physicians leaving the health service.”

Who Are Resident Physicians?

Resident doctors have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, depending on their specialty, or up to three years in general practice.

Further information are expected shortly.