AIREDALE General Hospital has been held up as an example of the way forward for the NHS on a BBC documentary.

Watchdog Healthcheck, shown on Monday night, explored the problem of waiting times at hospitals, in the wake of adverse publicity following the case of 94-year- old, Rose Addis in North London.

In the programme the Steeton hospital was praised for 'bucking the trend' and its use of nurse practitioners held up as an example of how hospitals should be managing their resources.

The Herald spoke to Steve Tomlinson, the service manager for critical services, at Airedale.

He said: "The majority of hospital's waiting lists for accident and emergency are going up, but ours have gone down in the past five years.

"It depends on the night how long patients have to wait. Sometimes you can come in and be seen straight away, and other times, when there is an increase in demand, it could be up to four hours.

"When people come in we use a point system to assess their needs and prioritise accordingly," he added.

In terms of 'trolley waits', the time it takes a patient who is to be admitted to be allocated a bed, Mr Tomlinson added there had never been a problem at Airedale. Only rarely has there been a case of someone waiting over an hour - the Government guideline is two.

The audit commission recently found Airedale to have one of the most efficient accident and emergency departments in the country.

The programme asked what could other hospitals learn from Airedale and what was the secret of its success? One conclusion, was the use of nurse practitioners.

Nurse practitioners were first introduced into the health service about six years ago, and are senior nurses trained to be able to diagnose, treat and discharge a patient without the need of a doctor. Sam Whittaker, a nurse practitioner at the hospital was interviewed on the programme and so was Mike Dudley, the accident and emergency consultant.

Mr Dudley said: "Emergency nurse practitioners make a huge difference in this department. They see about 10 to 15 per cent of all the patients that attend here. It may not sound a lot but it does have a significant effect in freeing up doctors to see more seriously ill patients."

Only one in 20 accident and emergency departments use nurse practitioners in this way and in most hospitals senior nurses are sent to university for up to 12 months to train.

However at Airedale, training is provided on-site through links with Huddersfield University, allowing more nurses to be trained at one time.

Mr Tomlinson added that the high quality of GPs in the area, meant less inappropriate referrals and was an added factor to the hospital's success.

"We have a very good department here," he said. "The medical and nursing staff work flat out most of the time. We are under pressure but at the end of the day we try to deliver the best service we can."