AS Medical Director for Bristol Royal Hospital for Children, I feel extremely privileged to lead a team of highly skilled and compassionate health professionals delivering highly complex care to hundreds of patients every day.

Nowhere is the complexity of the work we do more apparent than in the children’s heart unit, which provides specialist care to children born with congenital heart disease.

In 2013/14 we treated more than 900 children, around two-thirds of whom were from the South West: 46 were from Wiltshire. We also work closely with local District General Hospitals in Wiltshire , whose doctors refer their patients to us to provide expert advice and support.

Children with congenital heart disease may be born with only half a heart, a hole in their heart or sometimes a heart that is back to front. These children often require a series of complicated operations within days or hours of birth and then throughout their childhood.

Feedback from patients and their families about the heart unit at Bristol is consistently positive.

We know in a small number of cases families have expressed criticism of the care we provided and called for an independent review to investigate their concerns.

This review has been commissioned by NHS England under the leadership of Eleanor Grey QC, and its terms of reference have recently been announced.

We welcome the review as an opportunity to look closely at our systems and practices to see what we can do better in future. We recognise we have lost the trust of a small number of families and hope the review’s findings will help us better understand how this happened and what we can do to prevent this happening in future.

I feel fortunate to do the job I do and to witness every day the amazing work of our highly skilled and dedicated team who put the well-being of each and every child at the centre of their practice. I hope your child never needs our services, but if they do you should have every confidence that they will receive the best care possible, care that is as good as anywhere else in the country.

Dr Sean O’ Kelly, University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust