I thought, God, this is what we deal with every day

CONSULTANT DAI DAVIES ON COMING BACK FROM HOLS

- MARTIN BAGOT

PATIENTS on trolleys lined up head to toe are the "new normal" in casualty, says a top doctor. We were given exclusive access to the front line days after a survey of 5,000 nursing staff revealed the situation was the worst in NHS history. Walking through broken automatic doors into A&E at Epsom Hospital, there were patients everywhere.

Some were on beds behind curtains but three lay on trolleys in a line directly in front of the reception desk. In fact there wasn't space to stand before you received a polite request to move and let another trolley past.

The consultant responsible for the A&E told us: "I noticed when I came back from some annual leave recently and I thought, 'Oh my God, this is what we're dealing with every day'."

Dr Dai Davies continued: "The problem is you become blind to it because you see it so much. It has become the new normal."

One patient opposite the reception desk was Carol Askar, 72, who had been in A&E for 26 hours.

She has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and osteoarthritis and was admitted after being repeatedly sick and running up a fever.

Carol said: "It's very noisy. Last night we had a patient singing opera. There are security men going backwards and forwards.

"It is so busy but the staff have been really, really nice."

Another patient, Dwight Elliott, 56, had been suffering from a mouth infection before he collapsed at home that morning.

His wife called an ambulance. He said: "We've seen people being treated in the corridor around us all morning. If it's like this on a Friday morning I'd hate to see what it's like on a Friday night."

One nurse we spoke to had started her shift at 7am and said she would not be going home until 8.30pm.