Dr Philip Banfield revealed his own wife, herself a GP, had recently spent 12 hours on hospital trolley in A&E with chest pains.
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Speaking to Sky News' Sophy Ridge on Sunday, Dr Philip Banfield, the chairman of the British Medical Association, said that the health service now had half the beds for patients it had 30 years ago and described the situation for frontline staff as"brutal". "This has arisen because we just don't have enough beds for hospital needs. Part of that is not being able to discharge people from hospital and that creates a kind of log-jam. But this is years and years of running down the number of beds.
Dr Banfield said that the backlog at GPs' surgeries and lack of beds was pushing people to make conscious decisions not to seek medical treatment when they need it because they do not want to spend hours on a hospital trolley.
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