Adopt a separate tax to fix social care and increase the number of hospital beds - Yorkshire Post Letters

The doctors and nurses in the NHS have been well trained to do the job. They also have all the equipment to help and cure their patients. The only thing they have not got is the number of beds in which to place their patients.

For some reason that I do not understand, half of the hospital beds have been closed by the management, this has meant that the nurses that ran those wards have lost their jobs, and now surprise, surprise we have insufficient nurses and beds for the sick and elderly.

The patients over 75 are called bed blockers, I find this very offensive because I am in my 80th year. I started in the health service in 1956 and have seen and been involved with the improvements in the treatment of my patients. I have seen them live longer and happier lives. The elderly are then blamed for having and living with multiple diseases that some doctors find difficult to deal with.

As we get older many of our own bodily cells die (apoptosis) and we become more and more infirm and incapable of looking after ourselves. It has always been so.

All the closed beds on wards in the hospitals should be reopened so that the seriously ill patients can be admitted to them in a timely fashion, so that the A & E departments can be cleared for the next lot of ill patients.

The present A & E department can be likened to a bicycle that has lost its chain. The doctors and nurses are working like fury getting nowhere.

Social care for the elderly has completely broken down. Care homes are closing because the councils do not have enough money to give carers a proper salary. We must adopt a separate tax for our care in old age when we become infirm.

There are now insufficient nurses in hospitals and care homes. In order to solve this acute problem we must go back several years when young 17 and 18 year old girls and boys were enrolled into the NHS as pupil nurses, SEN and SRN.

These young teenagers can rapidly assist the qualified nurses on the wards where they will be taught how to care and speak to the sick and elderly. Some will want to work in care homes, where they must have a good salary commensurate with the importance of their job.

Consultant firms must again be re-established. Each consultant will have a team of doctors under them: senior registrars, registrars, core trainees, F1 and F2 and also medical students.

Every doctor must be involved in teaching one another and particularly the medical students. (The European Work Directive can be ignored as Germany and France have done for years).

Each firm will then be on call day and night for one week. This will occur only once every 4-6 weeks depending on the number of medical and surgical firms in each hospital. The junior doctors went on strike recently because the shift system they were working is intolerable and the training is very poor.

General Practice must be reordered so that medical centres again look after their patients 24-7. An open door policy is not a bad idea. No more waiting lists.

Finally massive efficiency savings could be gained by a reduction in NHS managers; most are incompetent and have run the NHS into bankruptcy.