The NHS’s chocolate gift for staff

• I SUPPOSE Ian Stoneham’s defence of the Camden & Islington NHS Foundation Trust’s gift of chocolates to staff is what we have grown to expect.
They are incapable of fault.
It is interesting that the evaluating body itself has questioned the validity of the figures provided for patient and staff surveys.
At a time when this trust has reduced the number of its in-patient beds and effectively closed the acute services it ran at St Luke’s Hospital besides reducing community services, then nurses and patients are concerned about what they say and how it may affect them. Jobs are going and it is harder to obtain the treatment that vulnerable patients desperately need, often leading to the tragedies reported in the New Journal. The effect of the chocolates is probably unimportant when it is fear that it is the real factor.
The trust goes on employing managers and management consultants but the services seem to become worse.
Certainly no patient I have spoken to has received a chocolate on their pillow while they have often received an unwelcome injection.
DANNY BLOOM
Grafton Road, NW5

• THE Director of Corporate and Business Development, Camden and Islington NHS Foundation Trust explained last week, in 500 words, why the trust gave their staff an unusual Christmas present (four chocolates). The mind boggles as to why this mental health trust should need a Director of Corporate and Business Development and furthermore why he should be involved in the distribution of chocolates.
JUNE GRUN
Savernake Road, NW3