‘It feels like a war zone’: exhausted ambulance service workers in England tell their stories

Lyndsay Hewitt-Brown, a paramedic based in Yorkshire, says there have been queues of as many as 17 ambulances outside Yorkshire A&E departments. Photograph: Yorkshire Pics/Alamy

Paramedics in England cannot respond to 3,500 urgent 999 calls every day because they are stuck outside hospitals waiting to hand over patients, putting other lives at risk, a Guardian investigation has found.

Here two ambulance service workers describe their experiences on the frontline that they say “feels like a war zone at times” amid the worst NHS winter crisis in years.