NHS whistleblower sacrifices his career to secretly capture brutal reality of ... trends now
The brutal reality of working in Britain's ailing emergency service has been laid bare by an eye-opening new documentary which shows how deadly delays have become commonplace.
Raw footage — captured during the darkest days of the NHS's busiest ever winter — shows overflowing A&E wards, with corridors jampacked of patients who have spent 20-plus hours waiting to be seen.
Cameras also capture the final hours of one man, following a critical delay in getting him the right treatment.
All of the hard-hitting clips were secretly captured by Daniel Waterhouse, a 30-year-old paramedic who bravely sacrificed his 999 career in order to expose the terrifying reality of life in the NHS.
Serving his last shift last week after resigning, he hopes his evidence, set to be aired by Channel 4 Dispatches on Thursday night, will 'help instigate change' and that 'something will be done'.
Raw footage captured by Daniel Waterhouse, a 30-year-old paramedic, during the darkest days of the NHS's worst ever winter, shows corridors jampacked with patients
Mr Waterhouse, from Finchley, north London, who qualified as an emergency technician in 2021, records the conditions inside A&E departments across Watford and Barnet
Asked about his decision to blow the whistle, Mr Waterhouse, who was working for East of England Ambulance Service during the investigation, told the Sunday Times: 'It was a moral choice.
'And there's a caveat to that as well, because going undercover in those situations could be considered immoral and will draw criticism I'm sure.
'But I think patient safety outweighs that.
'And those occasions were so strong in my head that I thought 'If only some change can happen, where some people don't have to go through that and die or suffer permanent disability, then it would be worth it'.'
Mr Waterhouse, from Finchley, north London, qualified as an emergency technician in 2021.
Serving his last shift last week after resigning, Mr Waterhouse (pictured above) hopes his evidence, set to be aired by Channel 4 Dispatches on Thursday night, will 'help instigate change'
Conditions from inside A&E departments across Watford and Barnet were captured between November 2022 and January.
On one occasion, a young girl who has injured her leg in a dance competition is carried, screaming in pain, into the A&E department at Watford General Hospital on a picnic table by her parents.
They say they were told it was a 20-hour wait for an ambulance.
In another scene, footage shows a woman having a seizure while stuck on a trolley in a queue on a hospital corridor.
One family also tells Mr Waterhouse they have been waiting in the corridor in A&E for at least 20 hours.
The faces of all NHS patients and staff are blurred to protect their identities.
Recounting his experience working for the service, he told the Sunday Times: 'We had patients dying left, right and centre.
'I remember one of the worst things was being asked by nurses to create a human shield with our bodies, standing shoulder to shoulder so they could wheel bodies out of the A&E without the patients seeing the body bags as they were waiting to go into the department. That was horrific.'
He added: 'We have got into a situation of normalisation, where people just accept that that's how things are.
'I was under no illusions that filming for Dispatches would categorically be the end of my career, but I wanted to do something that might help instigate change.'
Damning survey results disclosed during the programme also reveal more than half of the 1,200 ambulance workers surveyed had seen a patient die because of a delay involving an ambulance or other part of the care system
On one occasion, footage recorded by Daniel Waterhouse shows a young girl who has injured her leg in a dance competition, carried, screaming in pain, into the A&E department at Watford General Hospital on a picnic table by her parents. They say they were told it was a 20-hour wait for an ambulance
Damning survey results disclosed during the programme also reveal more than half of the 1,200 ambulance workers surveyed had seen a patient die because of a
