OVER the years I have seen the inside of Furness General Hospital’s A&E department as a patient a bit more often than I would have liked, and I have always been grateful for the expert care I have received.

For a few hours either side of midnight last Friday I was back in the unit – but this time as a fly-on-the-wall observer alongside medical staff and patients so I could better understand the pressure that the service is under and what is causing it.

The NHS is arguably the UK’s greatest achievement, famously delivered by the Attlee post-war Labour government. It remains the envy of countries whose citizens do not have access to free healthcare. But the strain on our great service is being felt across the country, with 65 of 152 hospital trusts issuing emergency winter alerts as bed shortages intensified and A&E departments began to buckle.

It is hard to overstate the complex logistical feat that our A&E staff perform every day and night. I was so impressed by the way the medical team constantly works to keep enough beds available for everyone who comes in, treating people and moving patients around to free up space. In my five-and-a-half hours there, doctors and nurses treated people with a whole range of problems. There was a frail old lady with serious pneumonia, a young man whose football wound had burst open, someone with sepsis, someone who had had a fall, a collapsed lung, a woman who had overdosed on drugs, and many more.

By the end of the shift I was still really worried by the strain the service is under - they are bursting at the seams with the number of people they treat, “running to stand still” as one staff member remarked. Very often every single bed in A&E is full and as a result medics are often having to leave people waiting in ambulances or on trolley beds in hospital corridors, or must keep them sitting in the waiting room far longer than the official target of four hours before being treated.

There are no quick or easy answers to the pressure on Furness General’s A&E but here are some thoughts and things I will push for:

- The swift completion of the expansion of a minor injuries treatment unit, right next to the existing A&E section, which staff hope will be ready at some point next month

- The much-needed investment by the trust in an extra resuscitation bed - the areas used to treat patients with extremely serious and urgent problems like a heart attack

- As much funding as is needed from the government to improve primary care - making more GP appointments available which would stop so many people having to go to A&E because they have nowhere to turn

- Reversal of the crazy decision to cut the bursaries of students training to be nurses. The hospital is desperate to recruit more nurses and is frantically searching abroad to attract more people here, yet the government is making it harder for us to train up our own people to fill the vacancies. That just doesn't make sense

- Similarly with junior doctors. A staggeringly high number of ‘locums’ – stand-in doctors – are being used because of staffing problems. Paying over the odds is burning scarce NHS funds which could be going on improving healthcare.

I want to put on record my sincere thanks to the A&E team for making me welcome. From the consultant, to nurses to the receptionist and everyone in between, this is a truly dedicated and impressive team of people who give their all to serve us. I salute them and will keep fighting in parliament for the resources they need to keep us all safe when we get sick.