NHS Apology For £10,000 Hitler Questionnaire

An ambulance service has apologised for a survey asking staff to rate how "cool" Hitler was.

The survey was sent out to 4,000 employees at West Midlands Ambulance Service

West Midlands Ambulance Service (WMAS) apologised for the survey, saying: "At the end of the day, Hitler galvanised a nation into doing something quite unusual."

"Dreadful atrocities took place off the back of that… the staff involved were not trying to cause any offence to anybody…with hindsight, it would have been better to have used a different example..."

In the NHS questionnaire staff were asked to rate how "cool" Hitler was

WMAS sent the questionnaire to 4,000 employees as part of a £10,000 study to identify good leadership.

Respondents were asked to rate how "cool" 10 famous leaders were on a scale of one to five.

Besides Hitler, the list included Gordon Brown, Richard Branson, Winston Churchill and Fabio Capello.

But health campaigner and former WMAS worker, Steve Jetley, was so incensed by the survey that he set up a website, www.howcoolishitler.net, condemning it.

On the site he says: "You may feel like many emergency ambulance crew members in the WMAS that the money would have been far better spent providing improved and more modern equipment (like pelvic splints instead of triangular bandages!), improved training or even replacing ageing ambulances with over 250,000 miles on the clock that are slow and unreliable."

Steve Jetley's website parodying the West Midlands Ambulance Service 'cool' survey

Incensed former employee Steve Jetley created a spoof NHS website

The project, called Making Leadership Cool: How Emerging Leaders Wish To Be Managed And Supported, is a year-long study being conducted by two members of staff at the ambulance service.

The aim was to identify the key characteristics of good leadership, to allow the organisation and the wider NHS to be more efficient and effective which, in turn, would have a direct and positive impact on improving patient care, WMAS said.

The questionnaire, sent out last month, had so far been completed by "several dozen" members of staff, the spokesman said. The funding for the project was provided by the West Midlands Strategic Health Authority, he added.

Source: Sky News