The development of consultant services.

Date:
1950
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The development of consultant services. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    4/44 (page 2)
    FOREWORD The object of this memorandum is to assist Regional Hospital Boards in the planning and future development of the consultant services. The immediate duty of Boards to ensure the effective maintenance of existing services will be more satisfactorily discharged if it is seen against the background of the long-term organisation of the service. The attempt has therefore been made in this memorandum to examine the scope and content of the different consultant services ; to consider how they might best be organised on a regional basis, bearing in mind the part to be played by the Teaching Hospital; and to estimate in terms of hospital facilities and medical staff what are the optimum future require- ments of a developed service. In short, the aim has been to state objectives and to suggest methods by which over a period of years those objectives may be reached from the starting point of the existing resources in buildings and personnel. Two points in particular should be mentioned. The first is that the memorandum is not put forward in any sense as a series of instructions which Regional Boards must follow. It seeks merely to suggest tenta- tive answers to questions which each Board must necessarily face in considering the planning of the services for their area. The second point is the obvious one that the whole of the proposals made in the memorandum cannot be made effective immediately.