Dave Johnston, 55, from Edinburgh, describes how he saw an NHS stretched to its limit.
Earlier today the Sunday Mail revealed that forty people are dying every week as a direct result of Scotland’s A&E crisis.
I started getting a twinge in my back three days after Christmas but within hours I couldn’t move and it hurt to breathe. I called 111 around 6.15pm and the operator said they would send a one-hour ambulance. I was scared but reassured when they said an urgent MRI scan was booked at Edinburgh’s Royal Infirmary and I was blue-lighted there. As I lay on a hospital trolley queue in the corridor of a dark A&E ward, I saw staff helping people non-stop for over 12 hours. Most patients were pensioners.
I had arrived in time for the 3.30pm scan but spent the next three hours waiting in that corridor. After two hours in an emergency observation room, with no observations done, I was returned to the corridor trolley queue.
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