Following last week’s public meeting at St Saviour’s Church, Dartmouth, I feel I must have my say.

I am only going to give my views on the necessity of hospital beds in Dartmouth.

Liz Davenport, interim chief executive of the NHS?trust, and Simon Tapley, chief operating officer of the clinical commissioning group, seem to have forgotten the whole point of the NHS – which is to provide suitable care for the sick, to promote good health and to ensure that the patient is at the heart of everything it does.

The model of care which they trumpet is that patients should be at home, to be visited by carers if necessary.

Let us look at the type of patient falling into the ‘care at home model’ :

Post-operative patients – often released early following major surgery.

Frail, chronically sick people who may also be very elderly.

Terminally ill patients.

In each of the above categories the patient has to rely on their family or neighbours or professional carers visiting them – maybe several times a day – to administer pain relief, toilet assistance, bodily care and help to move from chair to bed etc.

Until recently, I was a member of the patient participation group. I found that many friends and others, who I did not know, would stop me in the street and regale me with tales of the stress and worry of trying to care for their sick husband or wife or neighbour, when they themselves had neither the knowledge nor the strength to cope with the sick or dying person.

These people felt they were let down by the system by being expected to manage a situation that was beyond their capability.

They needed to have their loved one to be professionally looked after locally, where they could be visited and proper care given until well enough to return home..

Concerning convalescent patients after surgery, it is damaging to the national economy to expect working people to take time off work to act as amateur nurses. They may not know what is normal for the patient nor what is actually potentially a danger sign – post-surgery deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism are examples. The desperate amateur soon needs respite care themselves. The readmission of patients to acute beds is lessened by a period of professional convalescent care in a smaller non-acute setting.

The psychological harm caused by the sheer loneliness and depression in some patients being cared for at home in a non-ideal environment is torture and not to be tolerated.

The terminally ill patient often wants to remain at home to die, but when reality kicks in this can become an impossibility. It is again intolerable that there are no terminal care beds or hospice within a reasonable distance locally.

I am pleading for the quick resumption of beds in a small unit in Dartmouth to prevent those very sick people being farmed off to distant hospitals where they cannot practically be visited by friends and family. I think a major revamp of their model of care is called for to allow a touch of humanity.

My message to Messrs Davenport and Tapley and the clinical commissioning group is – I think the statistics quoted are flawed, seeming to take no account of those who rely on public transport in this isolated area. I could give many reasons why and how a much better service could be provided for Dartmouth and district.

Jane M Hattersley

Churchfields, Dartmouth