Your editorial celebrating the 60th anniversary of the NHS (5 July) was one of the most grudging accounts of the service I have read in a long time.
The main feature merely scratched the surface of conditions before 1948 – the high infant mortality rate, the many deaths from curable diseases, general low life expectancy and the fear that these generated in most families – not too much different
from conditions in the Third World today. The advances of the past 60 years have been really incredible.
Certainly, the NHS still faces many problems, not least the fact that so many of us take it for granted – until we have to use it. That's when we realise just how wonderful it is.
Surely it is a question of priorities. Something as valuable as healthcare comes at a price and has to be paid for by taxes of one kind or another. We could abandon the NHS and be like the United States where only the rich can afford proper treatment, or we could appreciate what value for money we get from the NHS. It may be expensive, but private healthcare would be even more expensive, and few could afford it.
HENRY L PHILIP
Grange Loan
Edinburgh You report (2 July) that millions of pounds have been wasted trying to boost Scottish healthcare and the implication made is that most of this has gone into GPs' pockets.
Your report was correct that my earnings increased by 38 per cent between 2003-2004 and 2005-2006. This was as a result of a lot of hard work improving the care of patients in my practice and was necessary to improve recruitment and retention in general practice. It now appears to be easier for practices to attract new partners than it was five or six years ago. How long this is going to last I cannot tell because my earnings have now decreased by 21 per cent between 2005-2006 and 2007-2008.
Despite my colleagues in the BMA telling the government that 90 per cent of GPs would achieve 90 per cent of the QOF points they were not believed and, as a consequence, our pay did go up substantially. However, over the last two years our pay has been frozen and we have had to face increasing costs and have had to pay increased salaries to our practice nurses and receptionists so that our earnings have substantially decreased.
If this continues there will be problems again in finding sufficient GPs.
(DR) JANET PATON
Dean Road
Bo'ness, West LothianOur own experience of the new Edinburgh Royal Infirmary (and associated hospitals) over the past six months has been totally different from those of James Gordon Young (Letters, 4 July). The numerous "pelicans" of our acquaintance are appalled at the extremely poor standard of nursing care, the very low staff morale, the limited interaction of health professionals with patients and relatives, and the complete lack of intra-staff and inter-hospital communication; all leading to a dangerous level of continuity of care.
We were therefore pleased to read that Mr Young had found the care that he received in the Western General to be of a very high standard. It is comforting to know that there are at least some pockets of excellence left in our overstretched and top-heavy NHS. It is surely a clear indication of poor coal-face staffing levels that he observed a highly qualified health professional "scrubbing down beds for new admissions".
We are currently celebrating the 60th birthday of the NHS but, if something is not done soon to address the complete lack of "Indians", and the plethora of chiefs, it is unlikely that our beloved NHS will make old bones.
(DRs) IRENE and PETER HILL
Cadogan Road
Edinburgh