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There is no hiding in the Accident & Emergency Room of a major hospital.

Everything is on display in vivid HD: people’s pain, fears, courage and hopes; the unfailing dedication, expertise and strength of the staff who work in them; and yes – the state of the NHS.

On New Year’s Eve, I worked a shift in A&E. Despite the heroic effort of emergency teams up and down the country, it is clear that the NHS is in meltdown.

This is not a surface issue or a temporary one. The symptoms of the NHS in crisis are all connected.

And even worse – they create new problems. From statistics alone, you can’t always see how these are interconnected. But you do see it in A&E.

It’s completely overcrowded. There are too many people who feel forced to come to A&E that shouldn’t have to be there: people who couldn’t get a GP appointment or people who have had to wait too long for a hip replacement and are now in severe pain.

(Image: Steve Bainbridge/Sunday Mirror)

Together with the emergency cases – from heart attacks to road traffic accidents – it is simply too much for the resources we have.

Cubicles are full because there’s no space on the wards. The wards are full because the social care system is completely inadequate to give people the support they need to return home when it should be possible for them to do so.

And that’s how you end up with ambulances queuing up outside hospitals up and down the country.

They are full of patients who can’t get the hospital care they need and paramedics can’t do what they’re trained to: go to see the next person who has called 999.

Doctors are too stretched to do the job we are trained to do: to treat the symptom and the cause.

As a doctor in that situation, you’re just trying to do the best you can – which is to treat visible symptoms, patch people up and treat wounds.

(Image: Steve Bainbridge/Sunday Mirror)

You don’t have the time to dig deeper to understand the root cause of many of the issues.

We had a teenage girl who was fainting. We checked her over and made sure she was fine. What we pride ourselves on being able to do is really find out why she’d fainted – is there an underlying eating disorder or is she being bullied at home or school? To have these conversations, you need to build trust and that takes time. Time we don’t have, because we don’t have the resources to cope.

What does that mean? That the patient will likely have to return for more care at some point, continuing and increasing the pressure on the already crumbling NHS.

It will not change until this Government decides to live up to what should be its most sacred duty: the protection of the health and security of all of us.

The NHS under Theresa May and Jeremy Hunt is underfunded and overwhelmed.

And I must be clear: the NHS’s historic underfunding is not an economic necessity – it is a political choice made because they believe that government should play as small a role in our lives as they can, made possible through slashing budgets.

That’s why this Government will not change its direction to protect us, so we must change the Government.

Until we do, the NHS will continue to crumble around its heroic staff who will carry on giving their all and with whom, I am honoured to stand alongside.