Licensing seems inevitable, but is it necessary

EDITOR—I'm sure that the revalidation of doctors in the United Kingdom that Eaton mentions in her news article will proceed.1 This will be mainly because it is driven by politicians and academics, and because, like so many of these things, it seemed like a good idea at the time, but I challenge whether it will make any difference to overall quality of service or care.

We have had this in Australia for 10 years now, yet there is still little hard evidence that it has done anything but introduce yet another layer of bureaucracy. We call it vocational registration (VR), and we have to accumulate a minimum number of points over a triennium. For me it has changed nothing in my work habits, as I …