In a paper presented to the RCN Research Society Dr Sue Armitage examines the interaction between the increasingly various disciplines.

We are facing a challenge to health care in this country and it has fundamental implications; more fundamental, perhaps, than ever before. For the past 40 years we, in the United Kingdom, have enjoyed the benefits of a health service which has responded to expressed needs. Those needs have been expressed not only by the patients and clients in receipt of the services given but by professionals who have demanded resources to develop their clinical practice and provide for the patients who come to them the services they see fit. Changing needs have been met as they have been identified. In very few instances have resources been limited to the extent that patient care has been affected.