Editor’s Opinion

Feb 26 2010 by Alison Lowson, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

EVERY so often I receive an anonymous letter from a reader, complaining at length about the treatment he or she has received at their local hospital.

This litany of woes usually criticises everything from the choice of dinner menu to the bedside manner of their consultant.

The letters are duly ‘spiked’ as it is not this newspaper’s policy to circulate accusations that cannot be checked or verified. Plus, I’m always of the opinion that if you have something unpleasant to say about something or somebody at least have the bottle to put your name to it. Most people do and I am always suspicious of the motives of those who insist on anonymity.

Not surprisingly, these letters came to mind when I was whisked into A&E on Friday morning after rupturing a disc in my spine (just as painful as it sounds!).

And it really made me wonder if these anonymous letter writers are actually talking about our National Health Service or if they have confused Scotland with Haiti.

From the moment the paramedics knocked on my front door to the moment I returned home with a bag full of pain-killers and fact sheets full of back-strengthening exercises, my experience was 100 per cent positive.

And before anyone accuses me of basing my comments on one trip to A&E with a minor health complaint, I’d like to point out that after almost five years of cancer treatment I consider myself a bit of an authority on the NHS in Scotland.

Yes, I will concede that the food is lousy, many ambulances are about 100 years out of date and some consultants could do with brushing up on their people skills, but where else in the world can you dial 999 and within 30 minutes be treated by highly-qualified medical staff in a clean, safe hospital?

And all for the price of your NI stamp?

On a similar theme, and since I’m confined to quarters for the next few weeks, I’ve been glued to daytime TV. On one documentary I heard an American woman, about the same age as me, explain how she, her husband and their three kids now lived in a rented trailer because they had to sell their home to pay the $60,000 medical bills after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?