The Axe on the Registrars
When the Socialist Medical Association, and so experienced a hospital administrator as Mr. F. Messer, Labour Member for Tottenham, who is chairman of the North-West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board, condemn the recent circular in which the Minister of Health called for a drastic reduction of hospital registrars, it is reasonable to conclude that the case against the circular is very strong indeed. A registrar, as not everyone knows (the name is unfortunate), is a salaried member of a hospital staff doing specialist work, and on the way to becoming a specialist, or consultant, in due course. How important he is a Central Middlesex Hospital registrar indicated in a letter in Tuesday's Times, stating that at that hospital 55 per cent. of major surgical operations and 50 per cent, of anaesthetics are performed by registrars. It having been intimated—or so the profession understood it—that under the National Health Service 7,500 full-time specialists would be required, Mr. Bevan has now decided that that figure is grossly excessive, that consequently a large proportion of the present 2,800 registrars will never have the opportunity to become specialists and that the number must be reduced to 1,700, the odd 1,100 being left to shift as best they -can. The injustice from the registrars' point of view is obvious ; the effect on the hospital services is no less plain ; it was stated in the House of Commons that if the required reduction of registrars is enforced 400 beds in one region will have to be closed, unless other doctors of comparable skill are engaged, at equal cost, to take their places. The whole proposal needs mani- festly to be reconsidered.
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