You hear many horror stories about our National Health Service. Ambulances queueing up outside hospitals for hours, unable to discharge their patients into an over full Accident and Emergency area at the local hospital. Then when the patients do get through to A&E, they have wait for ages to be triaged, which is in medic speak the preliminary assessment of patients or casualties in order to determine the urgency of their need for treatment and the nature of treatment required, and then they lie in a temporary bed in a corridor for days waiting for a bed in a ward to become available.

So it was with some trepidation that I was advised of a result of a recent X Ray at Gloucester General Hospital. The thing that they were looking for wasn’t there, but they found something sinister lurking in the corner of the x-ray which needed urgent action. It was ‘asymptomatic’, so I was unaware of it. I was in hospital next day, in a quiet six bed bay ward. Over the next couple of days I had further tests, and then I was wheeled down for the ‘procedure’ (the medical staff’s word for an operation). It took a few hours, and as I don’t like general anaesthetics they agreed to provide local anaesthetics to keep me comfortable. So I was awake for the ‘procedure’. One of the surgeons was as good a DJ as he was a medic, and played my desert island discs while the rest of the surgeons were at work. It was a comfortable experience, and I was home the following day.

Back in the Forest, the combining of health services from Blakeney, Westbury and Newnham into a the bright, comfortable, airy and well-appointed centre at Cinderford, which also has a Ruardean section, has been a great success. As well as the surgery doctors, there seems to be a new generation of senior nurses who have become ‘nurse specialists’, who can take some of the burden off doctors. These senior nurses can quite safely triage patients, treat where possible, issue prescriptions, or pass on to qualified doctors if necessary. This is a great use of staff resources, thus providing more patient time for the doctors. The old days of long waiting times for a doctor’s appointment seem to have now gone.

The new Forest Hospital at Cinderford is another bright medical facility, replacing the two, somewhat dated forest hospitals, at Lydney and the gently deteriorating former Dilke hospital on the Speech House to Cinderford road. Medical emergencies are dealt with quickly and efficiently. Isn’t our NHS wonderful?