The medical practitioners or health care professionals who have been involved in the decision about whether, for instance, a patient is given resuscitation or are alleged to have been involved in a momentary lapse of judgment are essential participants in the development of Health Law. The Court must have regard to the conduct of those practitioners in each case. There are other essential participants in the development of Health Law. In addition to the medical and health professionals they include the patient population, the legal profession, medical and other defence insurers, government departments and instrumentalities, public and private hospitals, the legislature and the judiciary. That focus is on the capacity of female medical graduates to obtain specialist training.
Specialists are obviously so important to the patient population.
Apart from this pivotal role in the medical community, specialists also perform the very important task of providing the judiciary with expert evidence which helps shape judge made law. In both the United States of America and Australia, findings show that despite equal productivity it takes women in medical academia up to twice as long to take promotional moves. It has been said that the negative value which is attached to this experience is strangely at odds with the profession's putative values. Such observations and findings have precipitated calls for an examination of the context in which female medical professionals are training and working. I understand that in 1993 the New South Wales Branch of the Australian Medical Association established a data base in the hope of attracting practitioners willing to share a training position.