I WRITE as someone who has worked alongside NHS staff in three general hospitals, and had close contact with patients being treated in several others. 

Last month, I had two nights in Musgrove for urgent surgery that had needed last-minute cancelling twice previously.

I was never in any doubt that ongoing and very difficult dialogues are continually being had within the hospital, about how best to ration their extremely limited bed availability for the best outcomes for the highest number of least well patients.

We all know, or should do by now, that UK hospital waiting lists have gone from an all-time low 12 years ago to an all-time high even before Covid struck.  

The mind boggles that, two years into a pandemic, vastly over-stretched NHS staff are regularly exposed to abuse from members of the public, however desperate.

There can be no excuse for such behaviour. 

In these incredibly difficult, stressful, and frustrating times for staff and patients alike, I have been blown away to keep discovering at first hand that Musgrove personnel have lost none of their striking helpfulness, their unfailing good nature, and their truly exceptional warmth towards those for whom they are trained and equipped to care.

Somerset County Gazette: EXTRA MILE: "The mind boggles that, two years into a pandemic, vastly over-stretched NHS staff are regularly exposed to abuse from members of the public, however desperate. There can be no excuse for such behaviour."EXTRA MILE: "The mind boggles that, two years into a pandemic, vastly over-stretched NHS staff are regularly exposed to abuse from members of the public, however desperate. There can be no excuse for such behaviour."  

I include all frontline staff here – the ‘public face and voice’ of the hospital.   

During my brief inpatient stay, I witnessed several examples of how over-stretched staff are somehow still managing to go an extra mile for patients, or to stay on after long and demanding shifts, or to stand by to come in when off-rota in order to help out colleagues.  

Some staff had needed to be redeployed from their usual wards, and then be shown by frantically busy colleagues how to carry out procedures unfamiliar to them.  

They steadfastly all got on with what was required of them.

How many of us could keep managing to do that, day in and day out, let alone two years into a pandemic that quickly brought the NHS to its knees?  

We are incredibly lucky to have this particular NHS facility in our county.  


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In my opinion, Musgrove has long been an unacknowledged flagship hospital, demonstrating the best of what enduring West Country values have to offer (many of Somerset’s care homes likewise).  

People who move to Somerset from elsewhere in the country often find the pace of life laughingly slow, but that is to miss a valuable point.  

Cultures worth preserving tend to be very hard to re-establish once lost, and I quite expected to find that the pandemic had changed Musgrove for the worse.  

Miraculously, it has not.

To keep on going in the face of unremitting stress, our local NHS staff obviously deserve nothing less than common courtesy and respect from the public. 

They also urgently need government to get on and address the longstanding social care shortfall that is causing numerous acute hospital beds to be occupied by patients who, whilst frail and in need of practical support to manage everyday living, are medically fit for discharge.  

As they keep struggling to cover long-vacant posts, doctors and nurses need to know there is to be a significant national increase in medical and nursing training places, so that there is at least some light at the end of a very long tunnel. 

Locally, health teams need an acknowledgement by central government that the huge increase in housing which it has imposed on Taunton in particular must be matched by funding with which to increase local hospital bed and staff capacity and community health resources.  

Hopefully our Somerset constituency MPs are busy representing these last three issues on behalf of us all, while we as residents take proper note of the remarkable kindness of everyone battling to care locally for our precious health. 

Jane Sherwood, Taunton