The place of academic research

The medically qualified academic research worker under university aegis but within the National Health Service has recently been subjected to frightening forces. His traditional role of being allowed and financed to do what he wants is questioned in an age of economic crisis and of concern about how to spend limited resources. The call for 'relevance' in academic research makes sense when looked at from society's viewpoint but nonsense when looked at from the research worker's viewpoint. Recent personal experience has generated a proposal for the resolution, in part, of these conflicting claims; namely, the university hospital. Unless academic research continues to flourish within our present framework, the quality of the practitioners of medicine and paramedical subjects will drop slowly over the next 20 years as the spirit of enquiry dies!