Pay our medics what they deserve

DEAR Editor, This has been a traumatic summer for me, with four emergency admissions to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, three of them life-threatening.

As a former governor, I watched the new hospital being built and it is good to see a consumer’s eye view of its activities, in particular, the A&E, acute assessment, general medical, cardiology, and colo-rectal surgery functions.

In each, I saw dedicated, overworked staff performing their duties professionally and with evident effectiveness at all levels. Consultants, junior doctors, nurses and assistants, catering staff, and porters in all specialisms did a wonderful job.

However, a special thanks should be given to the staff of the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine (RCDM), who provide a ‘free’ service that supplements the QEH staff so well.

Now that we do not have the frequent combat casualties of the Iraq and Afghan wars, the RCDM medics gain their experience with civilian patients at QEH, to mutual benefit.

We hear so much of failures in various hospitals across the West Midlands, sometimes because of poor management, but mainly because of underfunding in this period of government-imposed austerity budgeting.

We should be grateful that our world-class regional specialist hospital performs so well in these circumstances, but every pressure