A MEDICAL secretary looking for work has rubbished suggestions by Wycombe Hospital that there is a lack of staff around to type up patient notes.

Two departments at the hospital in Queen Alexandra Road have been farming out letters dictated between GPs and consultants to India for two years, because it said there were not enough trained medical secretaries in the area to do the job.

Our sister paper, the Bucks Free Press, reported concerns about the transferral of the letters on Friday.

NHS bosses insisted the move was safe and efficient, and blamed it on a national shortage of medical secretaries.

But one medical secretary, who has tried to get a job at Wycombe Hospital, questioned this. The 57-year-old woman from Little Chalfont, who does not want to be named, said: "If they say there are no medical secretaries around then that is rubbish.

"I have told their recruitment agency that I am available but they never get back to me.

"I know there are others that have taken jobs outside the medical profession."

The dermatology and cardiology units have been using a company called Dscribe to type up files electronically recorded by medical staff at the hospital on a digital voice recorder.

The hospital says the service is efficient, but our medical secretary, who has experience of the service from a spell at Amersham Hospital, said the work comes back full of mistakes.

She said: "The medical secretaries have to correct the letters when they come back from India. That is very demoralising for them."

Jon Fisher, communications manager for the Buckinghamshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "We are happy with the quality of the transcribed documents we receive.

"We would be happy for this person to contact our recruitment office."