Save our local hospitals.

I've spent most of the day in hospital, and very stressful it was too!. Nothing unusual in that, you might think, seeing as I'm a doctor. The big difference today was my role as a parent of a child having an operation rather than a professional, and my chance to experience my local NHS hospital as a customer rather than an employee.

The X-ray may give you a clue regarding the nature of a fairly trivial op, and I'm relieved to say all is well this evening. I'm not the slightest bit surprised to report that the whole experience from start to finish was excellent. A team of people, well trained, doing their jobs, and going the extra yard with kindness and compassion.

During my career I've worked in excess of 20 hospitals. I've always believed that the smaller hospitals, the District General Hospitals (DGH'S), are the best. Clearly our major cities need to have large tertiary referral centres with their research facilities, medical and nursing schools, and specialist units such as transplant, cardiovascular, neurosurgery etc.. But, local people need to have their local hospital. I have never understood the political drive to close small DGH's, and wish we could turn the clocks back 25 years when so many of the cottage hospitals and local unique clinics still existed. There is no doubt that our general hospital on the Ilse of Wight would have been closed or severely downgraded in the past 10 years if we didn't have The Solent separating us from Portsmouth and Southampton. I'm not going to get out my soapbox. I could rant forever, so I'll leave it at that.

So thanks to my colleagues at St Mary's. Robbie has had 2 bowls of ice cream and he's doing fine.