Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Remuneration of Consultants and Specialists.

  • Great Britain. Inter-Departmental Committee on Remuneration of Consultants and Specialists.
Date:
[1948]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Remuneration of Consultants and Specialists. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    3/32
    REPORT OF THE INTER-DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON THE REMUNERATION OF CONSULTANTS AND SPECIALISTS To the Rt. Hon. ANEURIN BEVAN, M.P., Minister of Health and the Rt. Hon. ARTHUR WOODBURN, M.P., Secretary of State for Scotland. SERS, We have completed the task for which we were appointed in May, 1947, and have now the honour to submit our report. Our terms of reference were as follows:— “To consider, after obtaining whatever information and evidence we thought fit, what ought to be the range of total professional remuneration ~ of registered medical practitioners engaged in the different branches ot consultant or specialist practice in any publicly organised hospital and specialist service; to consider this with due regard to what have been the financial expectations of consultant and specialist practice in the - past, to the financial expectations in other branches of medical practice, to the necessary post-graduate training and qualifications required and to the desirability of maintaining the proper social and economic status of specialist practice and its power to attract a suitable type of recruit, having regard to other forms of medical practice; and to make recom- mendations.’ 1. Evidence It was brought to our notice that a special committee called the Evidence Committee on the Remuneration of Consultants and Specialists had been set up by the Royal Colleges and the British Medical Association jointly, with the purpose of preparing evidence on behalf of consultants and specialists generally, and we decided to consider the written and oral evidence which this Committee was prepared to submit. The Evidence Committee con- sulted 23 medical organisations including the Royal Colleges and -many specialist associations in the course of its task so as to ensure that the evidence tendered, in so far as it involved expressions of opinion and judgments regarding professional matters, was in accordance with the majority views of specialists and consultants in every branch of Medicine. We anticipated that these various organisations might wish to submit separate evidence in| substantiation of any points which concerned them individually and which were not in their opinion adequately covered by the statements prepared on their behalf by the Evidence Committee. We accordingly invited written evidence both from those organisations which were directly represented on the Evidence Committee and also from a large number of associations repre- sentative of particular branches of specialist practice whether or not these had already been approached by the Evidence ‘Committee. We also issued a general invitation by means of a press notice to anyone disposed to furnish us with any relevant information. A list of the organisations and individuals from whom written statements have been- received, and of the witnesses examined orally, is contained in Appendix I. The ready response we received to our invitation both in the forms of written evidence and of offers to tender oral evidence was a great help in our investigation and we should like to take this opportunity of expressing our indebtedness and cordial thanks to all those who assisted us in this way. In view of the large measure of agreement found jin the evidence received from all sections of the profession and the exhaustive character of the information furnished by the Evidence Committee, we found it