The NHS is experiencing intense winter pressure, with critical incidents declared at a dozen hospitals across the UK by Wednesday.Ahead of a special day of coverage, the BBC has spoken to nurses dealing with demand in A&Es.”Patients are collapsing in the waiting room. It’s just hectic,” Lorraine, a nurse in Birmingham, told BBC Radio 5 Live on Tuesday.”This is happening in A&E up and down the country, all areas,” said Joanne, one nurse working in an emergency ward in Manchester. “A&E is in a desperate situation right now.””The government need to take urgent action. We need help,” she said.Without identifying which hospital she worked in, she said there had been 58 patients having to wait in the corridors of her emergency ward on Tuesday night because of a lack of beds. This was happening on a daily basis, she said.Lorraine, the nurse in Birmingham who works on night-shift, said elderly people and pensioners were among the worst-affected.”There’s women that are 90 that have been waiting for a bed for 24 hours,” she said.”We try our best but if there’s no beds what can we really do? We just make the old lady as comfortable as she can, just make sure that she’s okay. But there’s no beds.”There’s the “chaos” inside wards and then “you go outside, there’s loads of ambulances and it’s just so hectic”.She said she felt sorry for paramedics who due to the lack of space in hospitals are being forced to hold patients on board “for a long time”. “And then wh …
