For months, potentially even years, there have been conversations about whether the NHS is at breaking point. Patients are waiting in ambulances outside A&E for hours, sometimes days, to be seen; health boards in Wales have declared critical incidents due to 'unprecedented demand'; and thousands are on waiting lists for operations.
One leading doctor said that this winter has proved "significantly harder" for the Welsh NHS than other years, telling the BBC, that pressures on staff were "tremendous" and that they were suffering "moral injury". Hospitals have recently been advised to discharge patients who are well enough, even if a care package is not ready for them.
WalesOnline spoke to Judith Paget, the Director General of Health and Social Services and Chief Executive of NHS Wales, about the issues facing the health service at the moment - and what exactly is being done to tackle the problems we are currently seeing. This is what she told us.
