There are a number of reasons for this. First, the causes of the present crisis can be seen as the unfortunate coincidence of a number of relatively short-term adverse factors. Second, the problem, although widespread, has not affected the whole industry equally. THE FARM sector is in a deep crisis, which is both financial and psychological. Farm incomes have plummeted over the last two years and comparisons are often made with the farming crises of the 1870s or the inter-war years. League tables of doctors are not necessarily the way forward but a system of greater openness and accountability can only be to the benefit of both patients and doctors.. The way doctors conduct their work and perform is best assessed by people doing the same job.There must also be a means by which doctors can compare their own performance with that of their peers: more information to enable doctors to compare their results, so that those whose performance is below the norm can take action to improve the situation.
They are required by general medical council guidelines to report colleagues whose performance they believe to be below acceptable standards. The medical profession is now promoting a culture of openness and critical self- appraisal. I want to see the concept of whistle-blowing among doctors rendered obsolete. We must work towards a situation in which doctors who are putting patients at risk are quickly identified and helped.We have proposed a system of individual appraisal for consultants under which senior clinical specialists would be asked to review their clinical and non-clinical performance. The days when doctors thought they could turn a blind eye to the incompetence of their colleagues have gone.Doctors should be under no illusion about their obligations.
They have also raised the question of how the safety of patients can best be ensured. The British Medical Association will play no part in supporting unacceptable levels of performance by doctors. The chairman of the Council of the British Medical Association replies to Monday's leader RECENT CASES uncovering incompetence among doctors have quite rightly highlighted the way in which the medical profession seeks to regulate its performance. Woody Allen probably isn't as nice as John Baxter and I are to our partners and children. But how does Baxter think that you write, cast, shoot, star in and edit a film - not just once but every year? If this is nastiness, I wish that Orson Welles, Preston Sturges and other Hollywood casualties had had some of it.. And I'm glad to hear that Allen does not allow his actors any input at all into their roles.Much of this goes for the "damaging" biographical detail as well. But he has never made a film cynically, in the way that Steven Spielberg made The Lost World. Even when his ideas don't quite come off - as with the Greek chorus in Mighty Aphrodite - there is a pleasure in seeing something that hasn't been smoothed out by too many meetings and memos from executives.
As if the real miracle was not how such a personal film-maker had kept such a team together for so long...Allen's output has been extremely variable, ranging from the depths of September to the heights of Manhattan or The Purple Rose of Cairo. On the other hand, Baxter seems to consider Allen's relative financial success in Europe (which has frequently compensated for failure in America) as somehow inauthentic.Baxter virtually jeers in the book's final pages, describing the financial crisis of a few months ago which forced Allen to dismiss many of the collaborators he had kept on contract for two decades. Like too many current critics, he has difficulty in separating artistic achievement from success or failure at the box office. Since he won the Oscar for Annie Hall in 1977, he has written, directed and often starred in 21 feature films (plus the "Oedipus Wrecks" segment of New York Stories and a TV version of his play Don't Drink the Water). No other Hollywood film-maker can even begin to compete with this record.More than this, he has done it entirely on his own terms.