A Sussex A&E consultant has said that the NHS is in a crisis the likes of which he has never seen before.

Professor Rob Galloway, an emergency medicine consultant at the University Hospitals Sussex NHS Trust, said action needs to be taken now to prevent further avoidable deaths as patients across the country wait hours for treatment.

In a column for the Daily Mail, Prof Galloway said: “As an A&E doctor for 22 years, I have never known anything like this - the NHS is in crisis.

“In every hospital up and down the country, patients can be waiting hours in A&E to get treatment, and then many more hours, or days, to get a bed on a ward.

“Many of them are stuck in corridors in all states of distress - not only is this undignified but the care is inadequate as a result.

“Their care is delayed and this results in patients who shouldn’t die, dying.”

Prof Galloway said that the crisis in A&E departments is being caused primarily by a lack of flow of patients due to a lack of beds. The situation, he said, is worsened by the fact that a fifth of hospital beds are occupied by “medically fit patients” who need social care facilities.

In a “six-point prescription” to resolve the crisis, he suggested repurposing Nightingale hospitals, which were used for Covid patients, as social care facilities to allow some patients to be discharged, cancelling non-urgent operations and called for the government to declare a national critical incident.

“If in the next few days we take this different approach, then those 300-500 avoidable deaths a week will start to drop off, but if we do not, then they will start to rise and rise,” he said.

Despite the crisis, Prof Galloway stressed that NHS staff are “still there for you” and urged people to still come to A&E in an emergency.

His comments come as the Royal College of Nursing general secretary and chief executive Pat Cullen warned that A&E is in a “dangerous state”.

She said: “It is painful and infuriating to be in this position - especially for patients and for our members who are struggling on the frontline every day.

“One of the root causes is the ever-worsening workforce crisis, with nurses leaving in their droves because of a decade of real-terms pay cuts.”