The pressures facing accident and emergency departments in hospitals across the country are relentless.
Crisis is not too strong a word to use this winter, with a shortage of beds, overflowing waiting rooms and stressed out staff, while nurses, doctors and ambulance crews have been out on picket lines. And they are due to strike again on February 6, with unions Unite, GMB and the Royal College of Nurses taking action, reports the Mirror.
The paper’s Matthew Dresch visited the A&E department at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich and wanted to see for himself what life is like for those staff on the frontline. He met medicine consultant Dr Milan Chand, who told him how the final hours of an 80-year-old man’s life, forced to spend his last night on the planet in the hospital waiting room two weeks ago, was seared into his mind.
