Consultants are stretched to their limits

EDITOR—I work as one of four consultant obstetricians in an average district general hospital. We were all appointed about 10 years ago and are all aged over 50. A recent guideline from our royal college advised us that if we were performing fewer than 20 amniocenteses a year, we should ask ourselves if we should be doing any at all.

I have recently used the department's computer system to confirm that, for the four of us, our combined hands-on consultant experience of acute obstetrics over the past three years (out of about 9000 deliveries, around 750 of them assisted) has …