How to cure the NHS

I CARE more than most about the nHs, not only because I was a director of nursing and a hospital manager during my 40-year career, but also because I was on the receiving end of the best and worst it had to offer when I was diagnosed with cancer.

It’s not difficult to provide an excellent service at a good price, provided you frequently ask yourself and your team: ‘why do we follow this process? would it matter if it stopped tomorrow?’

Running the nHs as if we were spending our own money, which it is, and applying the standards we would want to be used on our family ought to be the only guiding principles.

In the Eighties, with a hospital administrator and medical superintendent, I ran a hospital within budget and improved standards. we did not create posts such as an ethical and diversity manager or other PC drains on resources.

for more than 20 years, the nHs has failed to utilise its leverage with regard to purchasing. The use of agency staff is exorbitantly expensive and continues unabated.

Here’s some advice for the nHs: buy supplies at the best price and quality possible; train doctors and nurses with the caveat that if they leave the nHs within seven years they should reimburse some of the cost; provide only essential health services and stop non-essential treatments such as cosmetic surgery, IVf and gender reassignment.

ELAINE McKIE, Appleby-in-Westmorland, Cumbria.