Today the Evening Advertiser prints in full the list of measures Princess Margaret Hospital is adopting in an attempt to tackle the winter crisis that appears to inflict the NHS annually.

The problems this year have started earlier than normal.

We were already planning to run a front page lead on Wednesday talking about patients being forced onto trolleys when, by coincidence, our own Shirley Mathias became an unwitting victim herself.

It is the hospital's misfortune that we got to hear about the treatment patients like Shirley are having to put up with.

She is just one of scores of patients who have suffered this year, and in past years, through the lack of beds at the PMH and its inability to cope with the rush of emergency admissions during the winter. Most of their horror stories go unreported People either don't want to make a fuss or wish to keep their ordeal private.

We welcome the PMH response to the problem, and thank it for making its action plan available to us.

But there most surely be a better way than to resort annually to this kind of crisis management.

Managers at the trust which runs PMH owe it to their patients to ensure those who need treatment are able to have it in comfort and with dignity.

It is a fundamental right that should never be lost.