Letters
Forfeiting the right to clinical freedom?
EDITOR, - As John Warden highlights,1 the medical profession is worried about the erosion of clinical freedom - and rightly so. In the face of the encroachment of budgetary stringency, closed formularies, higher profile management, and all the other pressures facing the health care system the professional independence of doctors is slowly ebbing away. Many people feel strongly that this is not a good thing. If taken to extremes, the reduction of the healing art to a mere technical formula will inevitably lead to a loss of impetus to extend the boundaries of medical knowledge and professional capability. But I must ask whether the medical profession's behaviour truly warrants a defence of this independence or whether standards of behaviour and practice have slipped so far that doctors have forfeited the right to clinical freedom.
The actions and attitude of some physicians have tainted the image of the profession as a
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