Letter: Consultant's time is fully utilised

Consultant's time

is fully utilised

Sir: Phil Hammond's jibes at consultant surgeons (Tabloid, 2 September) were pretty gratuitous cheap shots.

Easy stereotypes can be made of any profession, and will be wrong 95 per cent of the time. Of my 14 allocated hours of routine operating time, which is fully utilised, I am obliged to use a portion to train junior surgeons. Dr Hammond also conveniently forgets outpatient clinics, ward rounds, emergency work, correspondence etc.

The only reason my waiting list went up by four months last year was because there weren't enough beds to admit any routine cases during the winter crisis. The debate on how the NHS is run deserves better than this from someone who professes to tell it like it is.

NEIL HULTON FRCS

Consultant Surgeon

The Royal Oldham Hospital

Oldham