Britain's broken NHS, like you've never seen before trends now
Heartbreaking footage tonight lays bare the brutal reality inside Britain's crippled NHS.
Taken by an undercover paramedic during the busiest days of winter, Channel 4's eye-opening Dispatches documentary captures a series of damning incidents that staff warn have become commonplace.
One of the most harrowing clips featured in the hour-long programme shows the final moments of one man who died of a heart attack following delays in getting him to the right place.
Daniel Waterhouse, the 30-year-old 999 worker who bravely sacrificed his career in order to expose the terrifying reality of life in the NHS, described it as the 'hardest part' of his filming.
Other horrifying clips include that of a 90-year-old woman who lay on the ground outside in freezing temperatures for four hours and a young girl with a dislocated knee-cap who was taken to A&E on a picnic table because of ambulance delays.
Taken by an undercover paramedic during the busiest days of winter, Channel 4's eye-opening Dispatches documentary captures a series of damning incidents that staff warn have become commonplace
Footage shows undercover paramedic Daniel Waterhouse taking a man to the Resus unit where the most seriously ill or injured patients are usually dealt with only to find there is no room
Serving his last shift last week after resigning, Mr Waterhouse hopes his evidence will 'help instigate change' and that 'something will be done'.
In January, Mr Waterhouse received a call about someone who had been vomiting and experiencing chest pain for 18 hours.
The man had had two stents, metal or plastic tubes inserted to keep a passageway open, put in before Christmas but had never had a heart attack.
Mr Waterhouse said they knew he needed to be sent to the specialist heart unit at Harefield Hospital in Hillingdon, London.
After being cut off from the operator many times, they were finally told to text heart readings to a cardiologist.
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'
They received no response to the text so instead took the patient to Watford General Hospital.
There, they expected medics to be waiting for their arrival due to the severity of the man's condition, but no one was.
Two hours later, Mr Waterhouse received another job — to transport the same man to Harefield as a cardiologist had finally read the man's ECG readings and concluded he was having a heart attack.
'He could have gone three hours earlier to where he needed to be but because of the break down in communication he didn't,' Mr Waterhouse said.
On arrival at Harefield, the cardiologist told Mr Waterhouse: 'The scan they did over at Watford is suggesting the arteries that they put stents in a couple of months ago is blocked, completely blocked. The heart function is not very good at the moment I'm afraid.'
Dye was injected into the man's blood which revealed a lot of the heart tissue muscle was dead and 'there was no coming back from that.'
The man, whose face was blurred to protect his identity — like all of the patients who were covertly recorded — died shortly afterwards and Harefield do not believe delays affected the
