Managers have destroyed our NHS and made it an unhappy place to work - Yorkshire Post Letters

When I first started working and training in the NHS in 1956 to become a doctor I entered Sheffield Medical School and worked as a theatre orderly and hospital porter.

The hospitals were run by the hospital secretary, the matron, an accountant and the lady almoner.

Over 40 years ago hospital trusts were set up. CEOs were appointed to create hospital boards. The CEOs did not know or understand how doctors and nurses diagnosed disease or how patients were treated. I was asked to come onto the board, the CEO offered to double my salary, I refused. I loved my job as a consultant surgeon too much. The NHS was a very happy place to work and live in.

Other consultants, the matron and some ward sisters were co-opted onto the boards thus forming the hospital trust. The CEOs then appointed more and more under managers, increasing in number over the years. Every consultant surgeon now has to follow the diktat of four managers before he is able to operate on his patient.

Ward sisters have become ward managers. The main function of the ward sister was to teach and train future nurse recruits from the age of 17 or 18 at the bedside to become SEN or SRN.

They now go to University for two to three years, learn nothing about patient care or how to comfort the sick, they do not know how to clean a patient or what to do with a bedpan.

The managers have destroyed our NHS and made it into a very unhappy place to work in, that is why doctors and nurses and medical students are leaving hospitals, many change careers.

The function of the Government is to give money to the NHS for the teaching and training of doctors and nurses. Probably more importantly to equip hospitals with the tools required for diagnosis and treatment of patients.

Many UK hospitals have outdated equipment that should have been replaced years ago. We have ended up with a massive lack of new radiological, MRI, and scanning equipment. Also a lack of proton therapy in our radiotherapy departments as compared with nearly all hospitals in Continental Europe.