Doctors in England will go on strike for five consecutive days in November in a row over jobs and pay.
The British Medical Association (BMA) said resident doctors would strike on five consecutive days from 7am on 14 November to 7am on 19 November. Resident doctors, formerly known as junior doctors, make up about half of all doctors in the NHS.
Dr Jack Fletcher, the chair of the BMA’s resident doctors committee (RDC), said: “This is not where we wanted to be. We have spent the last week in talks with government, pressing the health secretary to end the scandal of doctors going unemployed.
“We know from our own survey half of second-year doctors in England are struggling to find jobs, 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.
“We talked with the government in good faith, keen for the health secretary to see that a deal that included options to gradually reverse the cuts to pay over several years, giving newly trained doctors a pay increase of just a pound an hour for the next four years.
“We hoped the government would see that our asks are not just reasonable but are in the best interests of the public and our patients and would also help stop our doctors leaving the NHS.”
Resident doctors 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 soon …
