The NHS is not perfect...

I usually sing the praises of the NHS whenever I can because usually the NHS people I meet and the care they offer are first class. Today I found out what happens on the fringes of the NHS.

I went to Clarkston Clinic for physio this morning. The physio department consists of one room. At one end are a set of desks where the physios and their admin back-up do their paperwork. The other half of the room consists of three cubicles, separated from each other by curtains, where the physios see their patients.

First there's the issue of privacy: nothing can be said without everyone in the room overhearing. Patients can hear phone calls taken and made by the admin staff. The admin staff can hear everything that's said between physios and patients - and the patients can hear each others' consultations.

Then there's space: each consultation area has space for a physio couch and a chair. There's nowhere to hang your coat or leave your bag. The physio has to squeeze round the bed, bumping into the person behind the curtain in the next cubicle as he or she does so. If the patient needs a pillow, the physio has to go and get one from the 'office' area because there's no storage space in the treatment area.

And there's the facility and the facilities: the building is a 1960s brutalist horror and everything inside it is from the same era. There's wheelchair access at the back door but I saw no sign of hoists or lifts for disabled patients. The inside walls of the building are peppered with tatty leaflets about everything under the sun, some of them tacked straight onto the walls, since there are very few proper noticeboards. It's noisy with traffic because the building faces on to a main road. I'd been warned before I went that parking is impossible.

I feel for what are obviously very professional staff working in conditions like this. I got good advice and every exercise I was given to do for my wonky knee (and the sciatica it is now causing) was demonstrated.

At one point when I had to ask the physio to repeat something he'd just said because of the noise around me, I commented: 'These are terrible working conditions.' He smiled, no doubt having had this conversation many times before. I believe the clinic is moving to the new poly-clinic now being built at Seres Road. That's bound to be an improvement but how awful to train for years and end up offering what is a very valuable service in slum conditions like this. I wonder how common this is.