Thousands of nurses are on strike for the second time in a week today as ministers stall on pay demands.
Hard-working medics are on their first nationwide walkout for 106 years after rejecting a 4.75% salary rise - way below inflation.
They've set a Friday deadline for talks to re-open or will announce new, more severe strikes next month.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay has declined to discuss pay when meeting union officials but said his door is open to discuss other areas of nursing.
The Royal College of Nursing union wants a rise of 19% but Mr Barclay has indicated it will have to wait for next year's pay review body.
Emergency departments are among the areas exempt from the industrial action.
It comes a day before the first ambulance strike in decades, as some patients are being warned they will need to book a taxi to get to A&E tomorrow.
Meanwhile, at least three ambulance services have now declared critical incidents.
Military personnel from the Household Division were pictured today taking part in ambulance training at Wellington Barracks in London, as they prepare to provide cover for ambulance workers on December 21 and 28.
Speaking at a picket line in Newcastle, RCN general secretary Pat Cullen today: “I want to say to the Prime Minister this morning, please step in now and do the decent thing on behalf of every patient and member of the public of this country.
“But please do the decent thing also for nursing staff, get round the table and start to talk to me on their behalf.
“That’s the only respectful and decent thing to do, and let’s bring these strikes to a conclusion.”
Have you been affected by the strikes? Let us know at webnews@mirror.co.uk
Shouts of "up the nurses" and beeps of support came from passing vans, black cabs, bikes, buses and cars as nurses stood on a picket line outside St Thomas' Hospital in London.
Dozens of drivers along the busy Westminster Road honked their horns in a signal of encouragement as the healthcare workers, some with their children alongside them, waved RCN banners.
Other supporters walked round the picket line offering nurses cake and other refreshments.
On a picket line outside Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool, staff nurse Lucy Savage, 21, said: "We need more money, we need more staff, we need patient safety. We're overworked and underpaid, the NHS is just a shambles."
Ms Savage said she qualified as a nurse in September.
She said: "There have been I don't know how many times in the past four weeks when I've gone home saying to my mum 'I'm not being a nurse for the rest of my life if this is the way it's going to carry on'.
"It's just so much pressure."
Suni George, 45, a team leader who was on the picket line outside the same hospital, said: "I have been a nurse for 17 years.
"The pay we get is the same now. We get a lot of tax so even when the annual income looks like it's gone up we don't have more money.
"We're more short-staffed now."
She said there had been support from patients and their families about the strikes.
"We have discussed it with families and they've been really supportive," she said.
Newly qualified nurse Liz Butler, 50, who was on the picket line outside Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool, said: "I've been working in A&E since September and I can see the strain on the department, it's just progressively got worse.
"The staff and the knowledge there are just unbelievable but they are so stretched and when you get home from work you feel as if you've not done your job."
Ms Butler said she had been a healthcare assistant (HCA) but trained to be a nurse as it was a lifelong dream.
She said: "There are days when I do think to myself I should have stayed as a HCA. That's disheartening."
She added: "I'm in £60,000 worth of debt and in April I have to start paying that back so I don't know what my wages are going to look like by that time.
"I live with my husband and between us our household is fine, but I don't know what things will be like come April.
"I don't know how the younger nurses who are single parents do it."
The NHS will be running a bank holiday-style service in many areas as thousands of operations and procedures are cancelled and rescheduled.
The RCN has said it will still staff chemotherapy, emergency cancer services, dialysis, critical care units, neonatal and paediatric intensive care, as well as some other services.
Some 16,000 appointments in England were cancelled and had to be rescheduled due to last Thursday's first nurse strike. The Government had put the figure at 70,000.
Transport Secretary Grant Shapps denied that the Government was trying to score political points over the wave of strikes.
"I don't agree with that at all," he told ITV's Good Morning Britain.
"I have absolutely no doubt at all that most people feel, like you and me and your viewers watching, that our nurses do a phenomenal job and we want to see them paid more and indeed there's a pay offer on the table to pay them more."
Defending Mr Barclay, Mr Shapps said: "We haven't tried to skimp on what the independent review body has recommended for nurses."
Shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, Pat McFadden, has said the government must find a compromise with the nurses.
Speaking to Sky News, Mr McFadden said during Labour's 13 years in office the party had never seen a major NHS strike and there had been "high levels of public satisfaction" with the service.
He said: "The government has to try to find a compromise with the health unions because the disruption being caused not only in the NHS strike but in all those other sectors too are enormously inconvenient to the public."
The Liberal Democrats have said Mr Barclay should quit if he cannot prevent NHS strikes.
Deputy leader Daisy Cooper said: "We are in the 11th hour to stop these strikes and if the Government doesn't negotiate properly with nurses and ambulance services it's real people who will pay the price.
"Steve Barclay must get round the table and resolve these strikes now.
"A Health Secretary that can't keep ambulances running during a winter crisis is not fit for office and must resign."
At a hospital yesterday, Health Secretary Barclay demanded unions come up with a full plan to ensure lives will be protected during the paramedic strike.
But Unite leader Sharon Graham warned Mr Barclay will "have to carry the can if patients suffer" and unions will not "blink first" to break the deadlock.
"It's Steve Barclay who is holding the country to ransom," she told The Mirror.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said “our door is always open” - but warned “these things are difficult” on pay.
Health minister Will Quince said that military personnel covering for striking ambulance workers will not be allowed to break red lights or turn on blue lights when driving ambulances.
“The armed forces personnel, who I’m hugely grateful to for their support in this endeavour, around 750 members of armed forces personnel are supporting trusts.
“What they won’t be able to do is break the law – so driving through red lights, they won’t be able to turn blue lights on. They will be there to drive ambulances in a support capacity for individual trusts,” he told BBC Breakfast.
But he insisted that military staff will still “play a hugely important role in supporting paramedics and ambulance staff in getting people to emergency departments”.
He said that he would be clear with the trade unions that there should be a “minimum service level”, adding that he was “concerned” about Wednesday’s planned action.
He also encourage people not to take part in “risky activity” on Wednesday, due to the scale of the disruption.
“Where people are planning any risky activity, I would strongly encourage them not to do so.”
