A distraught paramedic has spoken out after seeing a "devastated" husband rush his unresponsive wife to hospital after waiting hours for an ambulance to turn up.
The clinician spoke about the distressing incident in order to show how "completely stretched" the NHS is.
The paramedic, who works for East Midlands Ambulance Service, say they "never felt so awful" after being left powerless to help because of scant resources.
They told LeicestershireLive : "All we want to do is help. The amount of category one calls we hear, while sat waiting at the hospital to handover our patient is awful.
"Knowing that there are hardly any resources available because we are all held up or on scene with patients, when alternative pathways would have been more appropriate for them."
A heartbreaking post shared on Facebook said: "Never felt so awful as I do tonight. Whilst queuing at the hospital with a patient I saw a gentleman come rushing in his car into the ambulance car park where the ambulances were queued outside A&E and stopped outside my ambulance so I went over to ask what was wrong."
The a mbulance worker said members of the public should try consider using alternative services if their conditions are not life-threatening, or even refuse ambulances being sent by 111 if they feel they are able to make their own way to the hospital. The post comes after hospitals in Leicester declared a 'critical incident' yesterday due to a high influx of patient attendance in A&E.
University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust said long ambulance wait times and inability to discharge patients to onward care was also adding to the problem, and urged patients not to call 999 if possible.
The paramedic, who wants to stay anonymous, said they had "never felt so awful" after the "heartbreaking" incident, adding: "The NHS is broken. The ambulance service is broken."
The man told the paramedic that his wife was poorly at the back of his car and had been waiting for an ambulance for hours. When he dialled 999 again to chase up, he was met with apologies and informed by the control room that they had no one to send.
The paramedic's post continued: "This was over two hours ago before he'd got to the hospital. He decided to put his wife in the back of his car and drove to the hospital.
"She was unresponsive having a stroke or some sort of bleed on the brain. He'd been unable to sit her up as she was completely unresponsive so was crumpled in the footwell of the car not responding what so ever.
"I shouted for my colleagues to get help and equipment so we could help this lady. We ended up dismantling his back seats and his boot to get her out.
"They rushed her into the resuscitation bay. The poor gentleman was devastated, he was apologising for the inconvenience and was so upset and worried about his wife."
The paramedic apologised to the man for being let down and gave him well wishes for his wife's recovery. The post said: "Never have I felt so awful and for him to apologise to me was just heartbreaking.
"The NHS is broken, the ambulance service is broken. Can honestly say I don't feel proud today of the job I do because we aren't doing the job we signed up for."
The trust is advising those without life-threatening conditions like heart attacks, strokes, major bleeding and trauma should consider treatment through their local GPs, pharmacists or urgent care centres.
But with 111 operators also experiencing pressures, with up to 20,000 calls a day over the Christmas break, people's calls are taking longer to handle.
