Readers’ letters – 30 April 2015

As a team of consultant practitioner trainees in frailty - funded by Health Education Wessex and Thames Valley - we have read your commission document avidly and felt compelled to add our own response.

‘We recognise that acute hospitals often fail our patients’

First, we are not at all surprised by your findings, as they validate our own experiences of working in pre-hospital, community, as well as hospital care, with older people. We recognise that acute hospitals often fail our patients, and yet the system continues unchanged.

We welcome your acknowledgement that GP services and social care are grossly underfunded. We were sorry not to read more in recognising that wider community services are also running at about 50 per cent capacity and are significantly underfunded.

• Visit the commission’s page for more resources and findings

Challenge the political landscape

Acute care is not the provider of choice for many people who use our services, and we would welcome some excellent examples of intermediate care embedded within this document, to offer deliverable alternatives for those in the hospital care to showcase viable alternatives.

‘We continue to be inspired by the challenge of our changing political and health landscape’

We continue to be inspired by the challenge of our changing political and health landscape.

We welcome any opportunities that will drive us forward and endorse our roles - making us greedy to adopt and steal good practise wherever we find it.

We would welcome the opportunity to engage further with your team, as multiprofessional clinicians working on the ground.

Please do not hesitate to contact us at esther.clift@wessex.hee.nhs.uk

Esther Clift and Gary Cleeve are consultant practitioner trainees in frailty for Health Education Wessex; and Claire Barker and Jules Cavalier are consultant practitioner trainees in frailty for Health Education Thames Valley