A dad has revealed that he "wouldn't be here right now" if he hadn't listened to his gut and made his own way to the emergency room, after suffering from a cardiac arrest.
After revealing that he was forced to drive himself to the hospital after waiting nine hours for an ambulance amid the NHS pressures, Darrel Wilson, 54, is now using his own experience to urge people who need critical care to "get a taxi" rather than dial 999.
The dad-of-four recalled the moment he needed to call for an ambulance at 10:20pm on October 8 last year after he started experiencing severe chest pains while at home.
His wife, Debbie Wilson, 57, immediately called 999, and spoke with an operator, who took down Darrel's details and his symptoms.
After speaking with Darrel, the reception informed the couple that an ambulance would be there as soon as possible.
However, Debbie, a sales administrator, said that: "The ambulance never showed, and in the end Darrel's pain was too much to bear."
In fact, eight hours later, one still hadn't arrived.
Paramedics did not come to the home until 7.46am the next morning - 81 minutes after Darrel had been driven to A&E by his wife.
Debbie made the decision to drive Darrel to Royal Stoke University Hospital, Staffordshire, herself at 6am the next morning, after he spent the night lying on the floor while she made eight separate calls to the emergency services, frantically trying to hurry things up.
She recalled choosing to abandon her car in the hospital car park on arrival, and Darrel was taken into triage in extreme pain.
After arriving, he went into cardiac arrest 10 minutes later - which he believes wouldn't have happened had the ambulance arrived on time.
West Midlands Ambulance Service apologised for the delay, citing "pressures" on the NHS.
Darrel, from Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, said: "The phone operator just kept telling us, the next ambulance in the area will be coming to you - but it never did.
"We called 999 eight times, and kept being asked the same questions. In the end Debbie drove me, and if she hadn't of done, I wouldn't be here right now."
Thankfully, because Darrel was surrounded by doctors when he arrived at the hospital, he was successfully resuscitated after 11 defibrillator compressions.
The 54-year-old then underwent emergency surgery where he had two stents put into his heart, and was released from hospital five days later.
He has since been recovering well since that fateful night.
But he said nothing could restore his confidence in what he feels is a broken system.
Darrel, a JCB worker, said: "The nurses have said that if I had waited any longer for the ambulance, I wouldn't have a stent and I wouldn't be alive.
"We just kept hanging on, and every time we rang, we had to answer the same questions every time. They don't tell you how long it'll be."
He added: "I was in that much pain that I was on the floor most of the time. I thought it was the end of my life. The pain was just horrendous.
"I just want to tell other people so it doesn't happen to them.
"If it happened to me again, I wouldn't wait for an ambulance, no way - I'd go straight away and get a taxi."
A spokesperson for West Midlands Ambulance Service said: "We would like to apologise to Mr Wilson and his family for the delayed response. The ambulance service relies on each part of the health and social care system working together so that our ambulances can get to patients in the community quickly.
"Sadly, the pressures we are seeing in health and social care lead to long hospital handover delays with our crews left caring for patients that need admitting to hospital rather than responding to the next call.
"The result is that our crews are delayed reaching patients. We are working incredibly hard with all of our NHS and social care partners to prevent these delays, looking at new ways to safely hand over patients quickly so that our crews can respond more rapidly and save more lives."
Meanwhile, a report recently posted online - claiming to be from a frontline NHS doctor - claimed that between 60 per cent and 70 per cent of patients were recently waiting 10 hours to be seen in the emergency department.
A doctor has also stated that patients are dying while waiting a shocking two to three days in A&E because the NHS is “broken”, as the doctors’ union on Monday called for ‘immediate’ government action following these reports.
And many hospitals across the UK have recently been faced with hundreds of patients who "should be elsewhere", while people who need beds face 10-hour waits, a paramedic has said.
Richard Webber, a spokesman for the College of Paramedics, told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: "I talked to colleagues who work in acute hospitals and they are full of patients who should be elsewhere, they should be discharged out to care homes or need support in the community.
"There is a lack of staff working in social care and a lack of capacity in social care, many hospitals have 100 or 200 patients who shouldn't be in the hospital.
"They should be elsewhere being looked after in social care, they can't be discharged, which means that the patients in the emergency department can't be admitted to hospital.
"So, the absolute focus for me has to be on getting patients out of hospital who are fit, it just seems to me completely bizarre that we have a patient who has been deemed by a consultant as medically fit to go home or to somewhere else for care is left in a bed, or somebody who's not medically fit sits outside on an ambulance for eight or 10 hours waiting to be admitted.
"The real problem is to get patients discharged from hospital and get the system working, and that can only be done by greater investment in social care, and probably better employment, and pay is very, very low in that sector."
