Patient safety depends on adequate staffi ng but the number of doctors required for safe staffi ng for medical emergencies is not known. We measured the duration of the admission process for patients seen by medical teams in emergency departments (EDs) and acute medical units. History taking and examination by a core medical trainee took 22 minutes for a patient referred from the ED and 21 minutes for a patient referred from primary care. A complete admission clerking with prescription and ordering of investigations ranged from a mean of 15 minutes for a consultant in acute medicine to a mean of 55 minutes for a foundation year 1 trainee. The duration of post-take ward rounds also showed signifi cant variability. Our data can be used to model staffi ng patterns if combined with information about admission numbers and local set up.

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The high-visibility libel cases of the last few years have focused publie attention on the sensational aspects of defamation law. One by-product has been renewed criticism of the theory and practice of libel law. This Article presents a statutory scheme based, with minor changes, on a proposal I sketched several years ago.' Events since then, primarily the emergence of legislative proposals at the Congressional 2 and state levels 3 and recent commentary on my description, 4 warrant this step.Plaintiffs, defendants, and observers have different perspectives on what is wrong with today's libel law. Some who think current law insufficiently protective of defendants stress the number of "groundless" cases in the courts and the enormous defense costs even in the vast majority of cases in which defendants prevail. Others emphasize the great danger to the survival of the "grass roots" press posed by suits brought by powerful plaintiffs against smaller media. 5 On the other hand, some who think that the law is too restrictive to protect plaintiffs point to the paradigm of the ordinary citizen who is hurt by errors in the urban newspaper. 6 Others focus on the citizen who is discouraged from seeking office or serving in government by fear of being libeled without recourse. 7 Some plaintiffs seek recourse in terms of monetary damages; others