Hospital Breakdown - ER2 iro irkri ED111 3 0 1 2 From: Dr M. A.
R. Freeman, B. L. Alexander, A. J. L. Barnes, Nicholas Davenport, William Empson, Sarah Gainham, Ludovic Kennedy, Mrs Mary Whitehouse, T. A. Sandrock, Norman Sherry, Miss Elizabeth Creak.
Sta,—May I congratulate Mr John Rowan Wilson upon his article 'Hospital Breakdown' (September 9), describing the present emergency in the hospital services in this country? I am in entire agreement with his observations and conclusions, and I should like to add only one point.
The present inadequacies in staffing and material in the hospital services are gravely prejudicing medi- cal and para-medical training. As a consequence there is a danger that the standards of the medical profession in this country will fall in the coming years. Therefore not only is there a short-term crisis with respect to the provision of medical care for the population in the near future, there is an if anything more serious crisis with respect to medicine in this country in the long term. In rela- tion to the long-term situation, the Government's recent decision totally to freeze the salaries of clinical teachers may be the final disaster. One can only conclude that in a state of panic, the Govern- ment have taken measures of whose outcome they are unaware.
London, WI
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