Academic A&E, the Faculty and Changes of Name

For a long time A&E was regarded as a Cinderella specialty and until the early 1970s it was not recognised as a specialty at all. Following the appointment of the early consultants it was commonly regarded as a surgical subspecialty or, even worse in the eyes of its consultants, an orthopaedic subspecialty. And yet it was recognised that it dealt with medical emergencies. The first way to define a specialty is to develop a training programme and this was done in the late 1970s as described in Chapter 4. A specialty-specific exam is also useful and was achieved in 1982 but it took a long time to become fully accepted as the equivalent of the other higher diplomas.