As nurses went on strike on Wednesday, with its focus on low pay, the extent of the crisis facing patients in the UK’s state-run National Health Service (NHS) is being laid bare. According to NHS England, a record 54,532 people in December waited for more than 12 hours once arriving at A&E. A&E doctor Waheed Arian told The Times this week he was once confronted with 14 ambulances lined up outside his hospital in Coventry, central England. Darrel Wilson, 54, from Stockport, says nurses told him he would not have survived had his wife not driven him to the hospital herself. He called an ambulance one night in October at around 10:00 pm after suffering shortness of breath and chest pains.
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