A meeting too far

Abstract

Everyone agrees that doctors should be involved in management in the reformed health service but it depends what you mean by management. Since the 1991 reorganisation there has been an enormous increase in the number of non-medical managers. They spend much of their time in meetings. So do many doctors, but unfortunately our numbers have not similarly increased and the patients are still there. Before the reforms we had a medical staff committee composed of the consultant medical staff in the district. We met once a month at 5 o'clock and talked for two hours, mostly about how little notice the administration, as it was then, took of our views on any matter concerning the running of the hospital. Not that we often had a united coherent view. Now that we are a trust hospital the medical …