The Manpower Committee of the College has recently expressed concern about the apparent slow-down in the rate of expansion of the Consultant grade in Psychiatry. It has been both College policy and the policy of the Department of Health and Social Security to expand the numbers of Consultants in adult psychiatry.

The Department has issued two guidelines. In March 1972 guidelines on minimum standards in hospitals for the mentally ill were issued (in DS/86/72), in which a minimum standard of 0.45 Consultants to 100 in-patients was recommended. This figure was well below the then average of 0.60 Consultants per 100 in-patients in hospitals and units for the mentally ill in England, but at some hospitals the current ratio was much less. The minimum standard of 0.45 which it was hoped would be achieved by 1974 fell well short of what would be needed to remove inequalities between hospitals, but it took account of the prospective number of additional Consultants likely to be available in the two years to 1974 and was intended to have the effect of concentrating a due proportion of new Consultant posts in the hospitals which were most short-staffed.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists is at present concerned with establishing criteria whereby psychiatric hospitals and posts are to be accredited for training purposes. With regard to the role of the library, it is stated that ‘there should be a medical library adequately housed and suitably fitted. The library should contain sufficient books and subscribe to an adequate number of journals to meet the needs of the trainees. For psychiatric units in general hospitals and for those psychiatric hospitals where a library at a postgraduate centre is within very easy access, the psychiatric sections of the library should contain sufficient books to meet the trainees’ needs’. It is by no means clear, however, what constitutes ‘sufficient’ books and journals, nor what sort of library is ‘adequate’ for the needs of psychiatrists in training.