Crisis in A&E?

There was a lot in the news in the lead up to Christmas about the 'crisis' in A&E departments and how over-stretched they are.

Is this really the case?

I had the misfortune to visit A&E while staying at Rowntree Park a few weeks ago. I got there at 3pm and it was very quiet - just the odd person wandering in now and again (and some of them were there for several other departments that shared the same waiting area).

There were two receptionists (who must have taken it in turns to deal with patients, as there was so little for them to do) and a cleaner wandered through with a cleaning trolley, but still the vomit catcher and blood stained rag didn't get picked up from the floor.

The duty doctors came through a door and called out the name of their next patient. The one that I eventually saw came for no more than 2 other patients while I was there (one patient had wandered off for a newspaper, so the doctor just hung about waiting for him to come back). I eventually got called and was seen after a wait of 4 hours. As said, the doctor saw no more than 3 patients in that time - all 'walking wounded'. My 'consultation' took up no more than 10 minutes of his time.

I had an x-ray and afterwards the technician told me to wait by the area "where all the doctors and nurses congregate". It wasn't hard to find - there were dozens of them there, all chatting and drinking tea / coffee.

Considering that this was accident and emergency, I saw precious little sign of urgency.

I put it to you that there may be a serious problem with motivation or maybe work ethic here?