“I’ve got no oxygen”, cries emergency department nurse Lisa Blackwell.
She calls for more supplies just as three ambulances are about to arrive at Chesterfield Hospital in Derbyshire.
The new state-of-the-art A&E unit was opened less than two years ago but is already at breaking point.
During several days of filming, News saw 22 cubicles in the major bays full, with beds overflowing into the corridors.
“There’s no dignity in this,” says senior matron Stacie Russon.
An elderly lady has fallen on the slippery ice outside and has a large cut to her forehead. The blood is dripping down her cheeks. Her son gently tries to dab it away with a tissue as a nurse comes by with a blood pressure stand.
Her trolley is in a line of five banked up outside cubicles, while the patient on a bed in front vomits into a sick bowl.
Nationally, flu numbers are finally falling. The hope is that patient numbers would fall too – but the cold snap is posing problems.
“The cold and ice isn’t a good combination for elderly people,” says Dr Dan Crook, clinical co-lead in the emergency department.
One lady, Ann, had her leg crushed by her car after it slid on the ice and trapped her against the garage door.
“Some local school children heard me screaming and eventually gathered enough of them to push my car over and rescue me. They were amazing,” says Ann.
Patients are also presenting with hypothermia.
Michael Alton, 83, is in the resuscitation bay. When he arrived his temperature had fallen to 30.6C (87F).
He was found by his neighbour, who decided that waiting for an ambulance would take too long and drove him in.
As bloods are taken, heating blankets work fast to try and bring his temperature back up to the normal range of around 37C (99F). He’s confused and weak.
