Letters NHS staff recognition

Published: 07/03/2002, Volume II2, No. 5795 Page 22 23

I read with interest P Javidan's letter (17 January). I have become more and more irritated at constantly hearing how important and underpaid doctors and nurses are.

Of course doctors and nurses are important, and they deserve to be properly paid.

But many other healthcare groups also deserve significant pay rises and - more important, perhaps - praise for the jobs they perform, particularly when they are under just as much pressure as doctors and nurses, and more in some cases.

It is about time time the government and the public were made more aware of their existence, because currently the public's view of the health service is restricted to doctors and nurses.

If the public were asked: 'How many professional job titles in the NHS and private health sector can you name, apart from doctor and nurse?' almost nobody would have heard of operating department practitioners - and yet we are just one example.

But ODPs are becoming ubiquitous, and in future will secure the continuing care which patients receive in the operating theatre.

Graham Newport Deputy ODP manager Staffordshire General Hospital