Lost patients, abandoned mothers, unsupervised students, dangerously unwell people left to roam the community.
It has not been the official picture during a pandemic in which politicians have repeatedly insisted the NHS could and would cope.
Accounts from frontline staff tell a different story, however. Their anonymous descriptions are not of ‘coping’, but of overstretched midwives fearing for the safety of pregnant mothers and newborn babies; of mental health professionals unable to section dangerously ill people due to an absence of beds; of nurses locking themselves away to weep; of potentially fatal breakdowns in communication as beds were frantically moved around.
