I WELCOME Helen Puttick's typically on-the-ball piece about new plans by Healthcare Improvement Scotland to extend the scope of their scrutinies and the valid points made in your editorial ("Hospital staffing levels face scrutiny in major shake-up", The Herald, January 27, and leader, January 27).

However, clinicians of my vintage will sense something of a re-invention of the wheel.

There used to be an organisation known as the Scottish Hospitals (later Health) Advisory Service (Shas) charged with scrutinising all long-stay and psychiatric hospitals in Scotland, reporting directly to the Secretary of State for Scotland. A visit by Shas was a major event. A panel of relevant and respected professionals from a range of disciplines would be recruited for each visit and the panel would be on site for a week, or even longer if needed.

The overall "feel" of a service was built up through the inspection, first-hand, of every conceivable aspect of the service from clinical case notes and prescription charts through care plans, strategic plans, staffing levels and deployments, patient dignity and complaints, to physical amenity and food standards. No stone was left unturned and every category of staff, patients and relatives was interviewed.

You knew you had been given the once-over, but it always felt valid and constructive, not least because much of the process involved dialogue with senior and experienced professionals rather than bureaucratic form-filling.

The Healthcare Improvement Scotland initiative is of course much wider in terms of the hospitals to be visited, but one hopes that the actual inspection process will reflect lessons gained from the past.

Prof Angus Mackay,

Tigh-an-Rudha,

Ardrishaig, Argyll.

HELEN Puttick's report set me thinking about my own experience.

Earlier this month my wife, Gaelic poet Catriona NicGumaraid, collapsed and almost died in her sister's home in Sleat on Skye. Her attack was triggered by what we now know was a respiratory virus. We owe her survival to the emergency services and NHS Scotland.

First in a gallery of heroes was the lady at the other end of the 999 call, whose guidance, relayed to me via my sister-in-law, helped get her gasping for breath again after a (critically) short lapse; the second were the two paramedics of the Scottish Ambulance Service whose timely arrival with oxygen and other equipment regularised her breathing and heartbeat.

Their care continued in the ambulance to Broadford's Dr MacKinnon Memorial Hospital, a small but priceless jewel in NHS Scotland's crown. Its marvellous clinical staff revived Catriona to the point where she was able to ask what we had for dinner, a typically selfless act by a woman who had just escaped death.

Finally, a salute to the Royal Navy whose helicopter airlifted Catriona when bad weather in the south grounded the smaller Scottish Ambulance Service vehicles. The crew transferred her safely from Broadford to the intensive care unit in Glasgow's Southern General Hospital, whose outstandingly dedicated staff battled to save her.

Less than a week after her reception, Catriona was moved from intensive care and now converses with visitors.

My gratitude to all these people cannot find adequate expression. But this sequence of events has more than personal or local significance. A less sceptical age would have considered it miraculous. It is, at the very least, a triumphant vindication of a joined-up NHS Scotland at the top of its game, working with others. This, I shall forever value and never again take for granted. It is to be hoped that the proposed Healthcare Intelligence Review Group will also recognise such excellence, without losing sight of the necessary task of identifying shortcomings in Lanarkshire or elsewhere.

Thomas McLaughlin,

4 Munro Road,

Jordanhill,

Glasgow.

I HAVE recently returned home after receiving excellent care at the Western Infirmary, Glasgow, and the Golden Jubilee Hospital, Clydebank.

On arriving at A&E in the Western on a Friday evening I was seen by a nurse in less than five minutes and by two doctors in less than 20 minutes. Within three hours I was in a ward after several tests had been carried out.

I spent almost two weeks in the Western before being transferred to the Golden Jubilee for two days. Throughout the entire time I could not fault any member of staff - doctors, nurses or auxiliary staff such as cleaners - and cannot speak too highly of them all. The follow-up care that I am receiving is also first-rate.

Sometimes there can be a considerable amount of criticism of our medical services in the media, but I am sure that the NHS has many very satisfied patients like me.

Eleanor Easton,

21 Stirling Drive,

Bearsden.