THANK you for a very balanced piece on York Hospital in last Thursday's paper ('I've got nothing but praise for YDH', December 12).

The NHS, and its component trusts, is a very complex organisation which is too often treated with superficiality, coverage either dripping with fulsome praise or vitriolic criticism. What a pleasure then to see the good and the bad presented in such an objective way.

As someone who has survived two operations for cancer at York Hospital in the last four years, and various other forms of treatment, I feel qualified to comment on the hospital's standards.

I have been critical of those standards at times, but at the end of the day, life is invariably a mixture of good and bad. What we must try to do is to judge the overall effect on balance.

York Hospital is made up of thousands of people from consultants to nurses, administrative staff to cleaners, most of them doing their best most of the time to meet the needs of their patients. They are human beings with human problems, aches and pains, disappointments and mood swings. Is it any wonder that they occasionally get it wrong? Should we be surprised when they don't always respond to our demands exactly as we would like?

For my part I am grateful for their efforts, fallible though they may be, for their almost unfailing good humour and their determination to follow their vocation no matter what the cost. No, they don't always get it right but I, for one, will be eternally grateful that they try.

Douglas Curtis,

Knapton Close,

Strensall, York.

Updated: 11:11 Thursday, December 19, 2002