BMJ  2008;336:797 (12 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39546.513345.4E

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BMA asks government to support campaign for more consultants

¹ London

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The BMA has launched a campaign to call for more consultants in the NHS, after a survey of the royal colleges shows a growing shortfall in the number of specialists needed to meet demand in many clinical areas.

The number of consultants needs to rise in emergency medicine, trauma, intensive care, acute medicine, paediatrics, and obstetrics, says the BMA report.

The BMA says that mounting evidence also shows the need to increase the number of consultants above existing expansion to ensure that patients receive the highest possible level of care.

"It has become clear that many . . . NHS employers in the recent past have frozen or radically reduced consultant expansion in many specialties," said Jonathan Fielden, chairman of the BMA’s consultants’ committee. He has written to the health secretary, Alan Johnson, about his concerns, asking for the minister’s support for the campaign.

"Now that the NHS is in . . . [Full text of this article]

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