NHS Wales: Stacked ambulances acting as waiting rooms for A&E

The paramedics I speak to have decades of experience but said their skills are being dulled by the hours they spend sitting outside this hospital.

“If we’re not out there doing the big jobs, you lose that edge. Sometimes when something big does come in I worry I won’t remember what to do, I won’t be sharp,” he tells me.

Finally, we’re called for the brain scan, which is carried out in minutes.

I catch snippets of a conversation between other paramedics. A patient aged more than 100 years old is in one of the ambulances.

At 19:00 the paramedics and technicians begin to swap shifts, handing over their patients to their colleagues who will work through the night.

“I don’t want to see you tomorrow,” one paramedic tells me.

“Sometimes we come back on shift the next day and the same patient is still in the ambulance we left them in. It’s dreadful.

“We go home so depressed. You’re tired from just waiting. So many people are leaving the job.”

There’s a fuggy, dense smell of diesel lying heavy in the air. I notice huge industrial fans and think they are there because of the promised warm weather.

The paramedics think my theory is funny, “That’s for the fumes,” they tell me.

“We all go off shift with cracking headaches, feeling sick breathing all this in. Give it 10 or 15 years and there’ll be loads of claims for Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, external (COPD)”, he says.