A pillow count has been conducted at Victoria Hospital in Kirkcaldy in a bid to ensure there is no shortage of linen at the new wing.
Director of nursing Caroline Inwood said she personally walked the wards to count the number of pillows on beds and said there is no shortfall.
The unusual move followed a complaint to The Courier last month, after a concerned father took pillows and sheets to his sick son in the Victoria. James Handy claimed his son William had been denied an extra pillow by nurses who said people had been stealing them.
At a meeting of NHS Fife’s operational division committee on Monday, Ms Inwood offered an assurance this was not the case. A call has now been made for any suggestion that members of the public are stealing pillows to be ”put to bed”.
The number of official complaints made to the division peaked at almost 70 in February, just after the new £170 million wing opened. The amount has since dropped and 40 people made formal complaints in June, compared to around 25 in the same month last year.
Ms Inwood said: ”There is no reason to have a pillow shortage. We got 500 additional pillows back in January and we had another 500 pillows delivered recently.
”I’ve discussed it with the charge nurses and they feel that sometimes staff may make flippant remarks which are intended to be amusing but are misinterpreted.”
Chairman of the operations division David Stewart said: ”I think the suggestion the public are stealing pillows from this hospital has to be put to bed, if you’ll pardon the pun. I think the expression nurses use is, if there is no pillow available, they will go and steal one from the linen cupboard next door. It’s not the public stealing them. I have more faith in my fellow Fifers and I never believed that suggestion.”