Abstract

I read Richard Davenport’s ‘Neurological letter from Scotland’ (Practical Neurology, 2002, 2, 370–371) with growing interest and a certain sense of smug satisfaction. If in the next few months he feels certain prickles of irritation between his shoulder blades at 3am it will be because young SPRs across the land are plunging kitchen knives and other implements into the backs of Davenport R. After a complete break from the National Health Service I have recently returned to teach and attend meetings. My return confirmed to me that there was indeed a basis for an increasing fear that I had been trying to deny, on the grounds of ‘old fogeyism’, that over the last few years I had been seeing an increasing number of claims alleging clinical negligence against young neurologists. Their causes are various but they all stem from lack of the clinical experience that can only come from