Being a retired doctor, I take a special interest when the health service, for one reason or another, is featured on the front page of The Argus.

Thus it was with some intrigue that I read the headline “A&E waiting times soar” (February 15).

Of course, I am well aware of this fact and also the fact that acute beds are in short supply these days.

The last thing I want to do is upset our GPs, who work very hard and put many hours into doing what the health service expects of them.

However, when family doctors were covering their practices, usually sharing out-of-hours work between two or three other local practices, patients could have home visits from a local doctor, and sometimes their own GP.

Today, a similar request from a worried patient for out-of-hours attention seems to result in advice from a distant doctor or nurse, and sometimes neither.

The advice varies from “Call an ambulance” or “Go to A&E,” to “A doctor will call when available” or simple phone advice, which is not always the most reliable method.

As a result the distressed patient and their family decide to go to A&E, particularly as the long night beckons.

I am quite certain many of the patients taking up hospital beds nowadays would, if visited by one of their local GPs when they first called for help, have received advice, treatment and peace of mind and been happily looked after in their own home.

Is it so difficult for the health service to move back a little towards true family doctors who really knew their patients and were responsible for them 24 hours a day?

I still live in Shoreham, the town along with Southwick, in which I spent many years as a family doctor.

I see my old patients daily, often stopping for a chat. You’d be amazed at how many say, “I wish it was like it used to be!”

Dr David Gordon, Windlesham Road, Shoreham