Hospital thumbs-up - 'Cuts will make maintaining standards hard'

Hospital staff across the Lothians should be proud of the verdict which patients have just delivered.

The vast majority found them caring and helpful, their wards clean and treatment either met or bettered their expectations.

The results of NHS Lothian's inpatient experience survey are a powerful testimony to the high standard of work our doctors, nurses and support workers carry out each day.

Even in the high pressure environment of the Accident and Emergency department at the ERI - the busiest in the UK, dealing with 17,000 cases a month - eight out of ten patients were positive about the care they received.

Improvements are still needed in some areas, most strikingly in the food and drink on offer on the wards. Any trainee nurse could tell you that good nutrition is vital to a healthy recovery and it generally comes from eating a decent meal. Yet a quarter of patients complain about what they are served up.

It may pay the health board to ask further questions about the food that is on offer in different hospitals, including frozen and freshly cooked, and which is the most popular.

The high overall satisfaction rates highlight the level of service we have grown used to in the NHS in recent years. It is hard to imagine such positive feedback in the 1990s when waiting lists reached extraordinary lengths.

Most, though not all, of those problems have now been tackled.

The improvement though has come at a high cost, with the bill for running the NHS in Scotland rising to 8.4 billion this year. Questions about how effectively this huge sum is being spent will have to be answered in the months to come, with more change inevitable beyond the planned axing of more than 300 nursing jobs.

Sadly it is hard to imagine so many people answering so positively next time they are asked a question like 'did the nurses have enough time to talk to you?'

Failing to deliver

Sainsbury's decision not to deliver groceries to parts of the Capital due to traffic disruption during the Festival is frankly baffling.

If its delivery drivers can't handle the tourist hordes and associated road closures then how on earth have they coped with the tram works?

Unfortunately for Sainsbury's, many of its customers might decide to follow their advertising slogan "Try something new today" - and go to another supermarket.