🔗 Share this article Junior Doctors in the UK to Launch Five Consecutive Day Strike in November Doctors in the UK are set to begin a five-day strike in November, in protest over jobs and pay. Walkout Information The BMA announced that resident doctors will strike for five days in a row from November 14 at 7am to November 19 at 7am. Resident doctors, who make up about half of all doctors in the NHS, 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, urging the health minister to resolve the crisis of unemployed physicians.” “We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are facing unemployment, their talents being unused whilst millions of patients wait endlessly for treatment and hospital shifts go unfilled. This is a situation which cannot go on.” He added, “We negotiated sincerely, keen for the minister to understand that a agreement offering solutions to gradually reverse the pay reductions over several years, giving newly trained doctors a raise of just a pound an hour for the next four years.” “We hoped the authorities would see that our demands are not just reasonable but are in the interest of the community and our patients and would also help stop our doctors leaving the health service.” Who Are Resident Physicians? Junior physicians have as much as eight years of experience working as a hospital doctor, based on their field, or as many as three years in primary care. More details will follow soon.