Other countries are looking on appalled as the UK’s failure to reform social care has left its health service struggling to survive
It is 6am and a dozen ambulances are waiting to offload their patients, but the local NHS hospital is already full. Every bed in the emergency department is occupied. As well as the patients in ambulances, others lie inside on trolleys in corridors, some even on trolleys in cleared-out cupboards. In the waiting rooms, dozens more are in the long queues still to be seen.
“People are presenting with easily treatable conditions, but because it’s taken so long to get in, we’re already on the back foot,” says Robert, an A&E doctor at the hospital. (As he is discussing the poor quality of care at his hospital he does not want his last name, or the name of his hospital, to be published). “It’s terrible. It’s absolutely dire. We know patients deserve better.”
