I HAVE a special interest in seeing Thirsk’s Lambert Hospital reopen. My wife died there in the terminal stages of Alzheimer’s. The staff ensured that she and all my family were cared for perfectly.

My wife was nursed professionally, as comfortably as possible, treated with the utmost humanity and under the overall supervision of GPs from the adjacent practice, who we knew well.

In her final days, she was moved to a small suite overlooking a little garden where we could say our goodbyes day and night in absolute quiet and privacy. Everything that could be done was done to make her death easier for her and us.

Surely the South Tees Hospital NHS Foundation Trust management has been given long enough to sort the nursing problem that is keeping the hospital closed.

I know from experience that the trust is excellent at running the enormous James Cook Hospital but wonder whether it should be responsible for the management of the Thirsk facility.

Firstly, the Lambert will never be at the top of the trust’s agenda.

Secondly, paradoxically, I suggest that some of the best managers chosen for their skills in running very large organisations are not always good at overseeing a relatively tiny unit. The skill set may well be different. For example, consider the trust’s efforts to find relatively few registered nurses for the unit. The D&S Times recently reported that the authority was unable to recruit appropriate nurses despite looking abroad and that when 30 possible nurse recruits were offered a choice between the big, top of the range, high tech, glamorous, internationally known, James Cook University Hospital and the old, tiny, largely elderly care, low tech Lambert, they chose the former.

If this came as a surprise, it shouldn’t have done.

Perhaps it is time for a complete change in the organisation that cares for the future of this small but very important unit.

We need a comprehensive review of how it should be funded, organised, supervised and staffed with jobs designed to use the local resources that I suspect are available and that with some imagination could be deployed.

Recommissioning this small hospital should not be a major task compared to some that I have seen NHS managers tackle successfully over the years.

Perhaps all that is needed is a small expert project team drawn from appropriate local communities.

Tony Turrill, Thirsk