Shona sympathy
The clamour for the resignation of beleaguered Health Secretary Shona Robison prompts a number of points (your report, 27 April).
The first is that for every patient like Mrs Margaret Goodman, who has gone through turmoil, there are many more eternally grateful for the care and professional health expertise they have been given.
The second is that it is difficult to see how the minister can be held responsible for all operational difficulties in ambulance schedules, computer software systems and availability of paediatric consultants. Her role is to provide leadership on overall performance measured in terms of individual welfare, and on this the jury is still out. Senior, well-paid health officials throughout the country need to live up to their responsibilities too.
Problems do not just exist in Lothian and Forth Valley. Only this week Professor Sally Mapstone, principal and vicechancellor of St Andrews University, highlighted the effect on the student population in the area of the withdrawal of out-of-hours hospital services, supposedly on a temporary basis, throughout Fife region.
This was a decision made by a previously unknown official without any consultation even with the members of the Board charged with delivery of the facilities. It was made on the grounds of staff shortages elsewhere in the Health Service but with no guarantee on when the service would resume.
Officials of the Fife Health and Social Care partnership failed to attend a public meeting in Glenrothes earlier this week to account for the decision.
The Partnership was set up with the best of intentions – integration of health and social care provision – but was made to look bureaucratic, callous and remote. It was its first real test of how to deal with controversial proposals and it has turned out to be a public relations disaster.
Ms Robison should provide commitment and vision but she needs competence and sensitivity from the officials who should be helping her deliver a world-class health service.
BOB TAYLOR
Shiel Court, Glenrothes