Editorial comment.

Abstract

Over the last two decades the introduction of five formalised subspecialties within Australian and New Zealand obstetrics and gynaecology has provoked significant debate and concerns regarding fragmentation of the specialty. Some believe that one or more of the currently recognised subspecialties should be disbanded or restructured. Others believe that ‘special interest groups’ are more likely to better serve the interests of specialists and the women we care for. In this setting Clinical Associate Professor Barry Walters provides a thought-provoking opinion on the future of Obstetric Medicine.1 This manuscript raises the question, in my mind, of how best to provoke co-operative training and collegiality in the sometimes disparate health professionals who provide care for women in our society. While the Presidents of the specialist medical colleges meet regularly, the training schemes do not. While midwifery and obstetric groups occasionally meet, the gulf between trainees and curricula in the two professions has never been wider. Is it not time for all professionals who share the common goal of providing health care for women to move closer to cooperative training, practice and evidence-based care? On a different topic, Fellows and Trainees will now be familiar with the electronic version of The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology (ANZJOG) through Blackwell Synergy. This online delivery service is easily accessible through the secure area of the RANZCOG website, or websites of hospital and university libraries. A recent press release on behalf of nine global publishers, including our own publisher Blackwell, announced a new pilot program called CrossRef Search. It enables users to search the entire ‘scholarly research’ content of all participating publishers, using the familiar Google technology. The program filters out everything except the participating publishers’ content and will link to the content on publishers’ websites via digital object identifiers or regular URLs. The program will run through 2004 to evaluate functionality and to gather feedback from scientists, scholars and librarians for the purpose of fine-tuning the program. Readers are encouraged to try it out – go into http://www.blackwell-synergy.com and key in your user name and password. Alternatively for registered members of RANZCOG go to the RANZCOG website http://www.ranzcog.edu.au/ and follow the instructions to access to the online version of ANZJOG. There is a link through to CrossRef Search. When the search box is reached, key in for example the word ‘Caesarean’ and readers will be provided with 293 links in about 20 seconds to scholarly material.