THE maverick councillor banned from a hospital says “nobody is big enough” to stop her going back.
Ellen Glass was accused of stealing details from secret files in St John’s hospital, Livingston.
NHS bosses banned her, saying she pretended to be a hospital manager, then an MP, just to sneak in to a ward last week.
But Ms Glass, 62, insists she can do what she likes because she is “acting in the interests of patients.”
And she claims she’s already returned to St John’s without anyone noticing.
She said: “There’s nobody big enough to stop me going into St John’s.
“As far as I’m concerned that hospital is mine, because of my background in nursing since I was 18.
“I was acting in the interests of patients having heard about horrendous staffing levels.
“I was there on Monday and nobody stopped me.”
NHS Lothian wrote to her saying she was barred from entering the hospital unless accompanied by a senior manager.
They said a nurse complained when Glass copied information from a note in ward 14.
Ms Glass said the note said “8.9 per-cent sickness level” – which she claimed was “a taunt to the nurses.”
She added: “How can nurses be expected to deal with the pressure of running a ward of 30-odd people with next to no staff.
“Patients deserve far better. Money shouldn’t be an issue for the NHS, and I feel very passionately that I was doing the right thing in exposing this.
“If that bit of paper was so confidential, why was it stuck to a wall in full view of all the patients?”
NHS Lothian said they were investigating the contents of the note.
