It was 5am. I was tired and stressed but felt a sense of pride and elation about what the team and I had achieved.
Two hours earlier, two teenagers had been brought to A&E after being hit by a car.
Both were seriously injured — one had a fractured leg, a head injury and a broken shoulder; the other had a ruptured spleen and needed an urgent operation.
As the A&E consultant in charge, I had orchestrated the care of both patients and spent time with their families explaining what was happening.
Despite the extent of their injuries, two hours after arriving they were both on the path to recovery.
Prior to that, the Saturday night shift had been busy, incredibly busy.
I had dealt with many seriously ill patients: a woman who had broken her hip after falling in the bathroom, another with a painful and infected gallbladder, a man in his 80s with a large lung clot two months after recovering from Covid, a 25-year-old who had taken an overdose and many, many others.
Figures from NHS England show that, in May, more than two million patients went to A&E, 65 per cent more than in the same month last year, writes DR ROB GALLOWAY
And after speaking to the relatives of these two young men, all I wanted to do was have a coffee and sit quietly for five minutes before reviewing the next patient who needed our help.
But then I was told about the problem in 'minors', where self-presenting patients arrive.
There was now a four-and-a-half-hour wait for treatment and it was my job to try to sort this out.
As I started to see those waiting, my elation at how well we had treated our earlier patients turned into despondence and bewilderment.
These people had waited for more than four hours and, in so many of the cases, I was thinking, 'Why are you even here?'
I saw a woman in her 20s who had a bruise. Yes, a bruise.
She had fallen on her leg a week ago and had gone running since, but her mum had said she should get it checked and A&E was where she thought she should go.
Then there was the patient who had run out of blood pressure medications and said he couldn't get a repeat prescription because he was on holiday.
And a woman who had been in pain for three months, and another who was unhappy about how long it was taking to get an MRI scan after she had been referred for one a few weeks ago by her GP.
Someone else had a cut which needed a clean and a plaster, but certainly not A&E attention.
Then there was a steady stream of post-lockdown partying complications. Two patients had drunk too much and, instead of going home to vomit, friends had brought them in.
Another bloke had bought some 'weird stuff' . . . and now felt very 'weird'.
The next 'minor' patient, however, was anything but. He was 38 and had a terrible, sudden-onset headache.
It was a subarachnoid haemorrhage, a bleed in the brain which needs urgent surgery, and four hours was far longer than he should have waited.
But he had to, partly because staff were dealing with patients who could have been looked after elsewhere or who didn't need medical attention at all.
This scene is now typical of A&E
