Achieving a balance – feast and famine

Abstract

In 1986 a report by the UK health departments, the Joint Consultants Committee and chairmen of regional health authorities, Achieving A Balance ,1 proposed an integrated package of measures to achieve a gradual reform of hospital staffing in the interests of patients and doctors by reducing registrar numbers. The steering group, which emerged to implement these proposals, reflected a wide range of professional interests – royal colleges, the central committee on hospital medical services, the British Medical Association and its hospital junior staff committee, academic medicine and representatives of health authorities and the health departments.