2001

The cutbacks in health-care funding have not only affected the medical profession. In fact, as a profession, our nursing colleagues have been handicapped to a greater extent than we have, since most of them depend on hospital beds for work. Hospital beds close because nurses are not available to provide care, not because a surgeon cannot operate. And nurses have not been available because... well, that’s the question, isn’t it?

According to most sieclephiles, 1 January 2001 is the real start of the new millennium, so I suppose this bit of rambling incoherence is more appropriate than the 2000 version. Traditionally at this time of the year, I have attempted to make some sense of the previous year's chaos and in the next breath take editorial arrogance to a new level by extemporaneously predicting what kind of havoc awaits us in the new year.

Introduction

Epidemiology