The nurse who embarrassed Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt over the state of the NHS today delivers a damning verdict on patient care in Brighton and Hove.

Kathy Doughty, 51, a senior staff nurse in paediatrics at Brighton and Sussex University Hospital Trust, was seen by millions last week pointing an accusing finger at Mrs Hewitt at the Royal College of Nursing congress in Bournemouth and shouting: "You're a brave lady to come here after saying the NHS has had its best year yet."

In a grim insight into the state of the health service the nurse, who has spent 18 years at the Royal Alexandra hospital for sick children in Dyke Road, Brighton, told The Argus:

Growing bureaucracy and form filling was increasing the workload and taking nurses away from patient care;

Poor equipment and a lack of training meant staff were not able to use their own computers;

Workers were demoralised by poor salary rises under the £1 billion NHS-wide pay deal;

Threatened redundancies of specialist nurses were making a mockery of "patient choice".

Ms Doughty's criticisms follow the announcement of 325 job losses in the trust.

East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust became the third in the county last week to announce it was shedding jobs with the loss of 250 posts. It brings the number of job cuts in Sussex hospitals to almost 1,000.

Ms Doughty said another source of discontent was the Government's £1 billion Agenda for Change initiative, which had promised pay rises across the board but was offering her just £4 extra a year.

She said: "Enough is enough. How do you expect us to fulfil patient care when we are running round fulfilling Government diktats?

"If the 325 redundancies go ahead we will lose specialist nurses and be thoroughly scuppered.

"If you've got a specialist nurse on £28,000 and a general nurse on £18,000 they save £10,000 by getting rid of the specialists but they haven't thought the impact through. They just think a nurse is a nurse. You will find one hospital doing hernias, another hips. The Government tells the public they will have patient choice but we haven't got the infrastructure to make that choice."

She said poor computer equipment at the Royal Alex wasn't being replaced because it was moving next year to the main Royal Sussex County site.

She said many nurses were unable to use hospital's computers and had to give up free time to learn.

Mrs Doughty was among a group of nurses at the Royal College of Nursing conference calling for Mrs Hewitt to resign over the Government's track record with the NHS.

She has written to the Health Secretary demanding an explanation for a raft of recent bureaucratic changes.

She said 30 minutes of patient care could take an hour when all the forms had been filled in.

Services such as community midwives who visit mums-to-be at home are being cut as the midwives' time cannot be justified away from the ward.

Ms Doughty added: "Every minute and every treatment has to be justified. We can't keep doing these nice things, we can only do what we are paid for."

Lord Warner, the minister for National Health Service reform, warned last night hospitals risked becoming "unpopular, unsustainable and probably unsafe" if they did not adapt to reforms. He said it was plain the position of "the most financially challenged hospitals" raised questions "about the way their services are configured".