THE Tory candidate for Bishop Auckland says on her website that she will “fight to bring back the A&E to Bishop Auckland Hospital”.

This shows a lack of understanding of how the modern NHS functions.

Nobody could argue against wanting as many services as possible to be retained in their local hospital, and I have more emotional attachment to Bishop Auckland Hospital than most, having worked there for 22 years.

But it makes no sense and would indeed be unsafe for an Accident and Emergency Department to function in a hospital without all the other acute medical specialties to back it up.

Patients arrive at A&E departments with all kinds of serious conditions, requiring treatment by specialist doctors in Surgery, Orthopaedics and Trauma, Paediatrics, Acute Medicine, Gynaecology, the list goes on.

If those specialist doctors, and the beds into which those patients would need to be admitted, were miles away in Darlington or Durham, then an A&E department at Bishop Auckland would be isolated, unsafe and unsustainable.

The pathology and radiology services sufficient to support an A&E at Bishop Auckland are no longer there either and the costs of reinstating them would be prohibitive.

Sadly, all those acute medical specialties are long gone from Bishop Auckland Hospital and there is no chance of them returning.

Even if enough doctors and nurses in each of those specialties could be recruited to staff safe and legal rotas at Bishop Auckland, it would be completely unaffordable to employ the number required.

There is a national recruitment crisis in many areas of medicine with a lot of unfilled posts. Look at what has happened to the Friarage Hospital in Northallerton, which is still just about a functioning general hospital, but has been unable for several years to recruit sufficient specialists for its A&E which is now being downgraded.

It is in one of the safest Tory seats in the country with its erstwhile MP a member of the cabinet, yet the changes went ahead regardless.

So, if Dehenna Davison thinks she can turn back the tide in the NHS and reinstate an A&E to Bishop Auckland she is naïve.

Dr Heather Smith, Retired Consultant, Bishop Auckland.