SIR — With reference to your front page report in respect to the medical cover at the new Minehead Hospital, I do believe that serious consideration should be given to how this will be introduced when the hospital opens.

I am sure that we all have the greatest respect for the expertise and duties carried out by our very capable nurse practitioners, but surely there has to be a limit to the responsibility they can be expected to undertake.

Judith Brown from the Community Health Authority responded in your report by stating that Minehead was the only minor injuries unit that is not nurse-led.

This may well be the case, but my concern is that Minehead is 24 miles from a supporting hospital, ie Musgrove Park, in the case of a serious incident referral.

With our sometimes problematical connecting road, the A358, or a situation where a local ambulance is not available, this could result an ambulance round trip of some 50 miles before a doctor may be seen.

This may well take a serious case beyond the so-called "Golden Hour" and will certainly put a lot of pressure on our paramedics if people call an ambulance rather than attend the local hospital in the knowledge at least a paramedic with a fully equipped ambulance will attend.

Nurses are undertaking more of the roles that doctors did in the past but are now expected to take on responsibilities that at the end of the day they should not be expected to do without GP support and they are certainly not paid to do so.

They are not doctors and please don't expect them to be so, no matter how experienced or well trained they are.

It is unfair on them to be asked to take such a huge responsibility irrespective of how willing they are to do so, and with the recent closure of the medical centre at Butlins which was staffed by qualified nurses from our local GP surgeries, the workload for frontline staff at the new hospital may well prove to be excessive.

This is surely not what the local and surrounding communities expected when the new hospital was completed.

Most believe a great step forward in local medical services with the availability of a doctor-led emergency unit was forthcoming, and not a local triage unit which is what we seem to be getting.

Why is it that doctor cover is provided by local GPs either in house or on call at the hospital at the moment but this policy will not continue when the new one opens?

Gill Styles RGN,

Lower Park,

Minehead.