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NURSES IN FAMILY-PLANNING PROJECTTHE Department of Health and Social Security has

agreed to provide funds for a research project at King’sCollege Hospital, London, for an experimental family-planning clinic run by specially trained nurses. The aimof the project is to assess the feasibility of using suchnurses to give family-planning advice, and to prescribe andfit all forms of contraceptive currently in use. The nurseswill be responsible for the day-to-day running of theclinic, but a doctor will retain overall responsibility andwill countersign prescriptions. The Department has

emphasised the experimental nature of the project, theresults of which will be carefully assessed with the pro-fessional and advisory bodies concerned with familyplanning. It should not necessarily be regarded as thepattern for the future role of the nurse in family-planningclinics elsewhere; nor will it in any way anticipate theresults of the Joint Working Group on the Distributionand Supervision of Oral Contraceptives, recently set upby the Central Health Services Council, the Committeeon Safety of Medicines, and the Medicines Commission.

TRAINING IN COMMUNITY MEDICINE

THE specialty of community medicine embraces a widespectrum of skills and areas of activity, and training forthose wishing to enter the specialty therefore needs to beboth comprehensive and flexible enough to meet individualneeds. Among the training courses offered is the Midlandsand South Western inter-regional scheme of training, nowin its second year, which aims not only to enable traineesto pass the first part of the membership examination of theFaculty of Community Medicine, but also to give them asound basic knowledge and experience of the whole fieldof community medicine. The course is run by the WestMidlands, South Western, Oxford, and Wessex RegionalHealth Authorities and by the Welsh Office. It givessuitable trainee registrarships of 2 years’ tenure, duringwhich the Universities of Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff,Exeter, Oxford, Reading, and Southampton provide 20weeks of intensive residential training in modules of 2or 3 weeks. Between modules trainees have experience atregional, area, and district level in accordance with theirindividual requirements, and under the supervision of theregional medical officer, the Faculty’s regional specialistadviser, and the trainee’s individual academic tutor.

HORMONAL PREGNANCY TESTS

PRELIMINARY results of a case/control study, togetherwith earlier work, suggest an association between hormonalpregnancy tests and congenital abnormalities. The Com-mittee on Safety of Medicines recommends that thismethod should not now normally be used.2

University of LondonProf. M. R. Alderson, professor of medical information

science at the University of Southampton, has beenappointed to the Cancer Research Campaign chair ofepidemiology at the Institute of Cancer Research, RoyalCancer Hospital.The title of professor of clinical histopathology has been

conferred on Dr P. J. Scheuer in respect of his post at theRoyal Free Hospital School of Medicine.Dr Scheuer is 46 and graduated M.B. from the University of

London in 1954 and M.D. in 1961; he became M.R.C.PATH. in1964. Following house-appointments and service in the R.A.M.C.he was successively resident pathologist, research registrar, andlecturer at the Royal Free Hospital. In 1962-63 he was British

Postgraduate Medical Federation travelling fellow at Mount

1. Greenberg, G., Inman, W. H. W., Weatherall, J. A. C., Adelstein,A. M. Br. med. J. 1975, ii, 191.

2. Adverse Reaction Series, no. 13. Committee on Safety of Medicines,June, 1975.

Sinai Hospital, New York. In 1964 he was appointed seniorlecturer at the Royal Free Hospital School of Medicine, becomingreader in morbid anatomy (later histopathology) there in 1971.He is particularly interested in liver disease.

University of Newcastle upon TyneDr 0. F. W. James has been appointed to the new

William Leech readership in medicine (geriatrics).

CORRIGENDUM: Post-mortem Alcohol.-In this editorial (May31, p. 1229) we said that blood should be taken from threeabdominal sites. They need not, in fact, be abdominal.

Diary of the Week

JUNE 15 To 21

Monday, l6thINSTITUTE OF DERMATOLOGY, St. John’s Hospital for Diseases of the

Skin, Lisle Street, Leicester Square, London WC2H 7BJ4.30 P.M. Dr Rodney Grahame: Cutaneous and Joint Disease.

Tuesday, 17thINSTITUTE OF CHILD HEALTH, 30 Guilford Street, London WCI

5.30 P.M. Prof. E. H. Kass (Cambridge, Massachusetts): Hypertensionas an Acquired Disease of Childhood.

Wednesday, 18thROYAL POSTGRADUATE MEDICAL SCHOOL, Hammersmith Hospital,

London W122 P.M. Prof. Frederick Walker: Glomerular Basement Membrane.

INSTITUTE OF ORTHOPEDICS, 234 Great Portland Street, London WIN6AD

6 P.M. Prof. H. A. Sissons: Pathology of Nerve Tumours.ROYAL FREE HOSPITAL, Pond Street, Hampstead, London NW3 2QG

5 P.M. Dr A. G. Bearn (New York): The Investigation of InheritedMetabolic Disease in Cell Culture.

Thursday, 19th ’

KING’S COLLEGE HOSPITAL MEDICAL SCHOOL, Denmark Hill, LondonSE5 8RX

4.30 P.M. Mr. H. L.-C. Wood: The Pattern of Surgery in Nigeria.(Legg memorial lecture.)

ROYAL COLLEGE OF SURGEONS OF EDINBURGH,

4.30 P.M. (Royal Infirmary, Huddersfield.) Mr J. N. Longrigg:Experimental and Clinical Studies of the Renal Calyces,Pelvis, and Ureter. (Robert Liston Lecture.) .

AppointmentsNorthern Regional Health Authority:ANWAR, MASUD, M.B.Punjab, M.R.C.P., D.C.M.T., D.P.H.: consultant in

geriatric medicine, Hartlepool district, Cleveland A.H.A.CHETTUR, B. K., M.B.Kamatak, F.F.A. R.c.s.: consultant anaesthetist,

Gateshead A.H.A.CHOUDHARY, G. P., M.B.Mangalore, M.R.C.P., M.R.C.P.I.: consultant

’

in geriatric medicine, Sunderland A.H.A.COSBIE Ross, J. A. M.B.L’pool, M.R.C.O.G. : consultant obstetrician and

gynaecologist. South Tees district, Cleveland A.H.A.FRANCIS, R. C., M.B.Lond., M.R.C.O.G., D.T.M.&H.: consultant

obstetrician and gynaecologist, Gateshead A.H.A.HARKER, NOBLLB E. M., M.B., B.sc.Lond., M.R.C.PATH.: consultant

haematologist, South Tees district, Cleveland A.H.A.HEAVISIDE, D. W., M.B.Durh., F.F.A. R.c.s.: consultant anaesthetist

(cardiothoracic), Shotley Bridge General Hospital.IBRAHIMI, G. S., M.B.Kabul, M.R.C.PSYCH., D.P.M.: consultant in

mental illness, Cherry Knowle Hospital, Ryhope.JEANS, JUNE E., M.B., B.sc.Durh., M.R.C.PSYCH., D.P.M. : consultant in

mental illness (children), - Sunderland and South TynesideA.H.A.S.

KELLY, J. F., M.B.Cantab., F.R.C.S.: consultant general surgeon,Lancaster district, Lancashire A.H.A., and Kendal Hospitals,East Cumbria district, Cumbria A.H.A.

KERR, GEORGE, M.B.Brist., M.R.C.PSYCH., D.P.M.: consultant in mentalhandicap, Dovenby Hall Hospital, Cockermouth.

NEASHAM, JOHN, M.B.Leeds, F.F.A. R.c.s.: consultant anaathetist,South Tees district, Cleveland A.H.A.

NIVEN, P. A. R., M.B.Cantab., M.R.C.O.G., F.R.C.S.: consultant obstetri-cian and gynaecologist, Newcastle A.H.A. (teaching), and Hexhamand district hospitals, Northumberland A.H.A.

SARSON, DAVID, M.B.Lond., F.R.C.S. : consultant general surgeon,Sunderland A.H.A.