DOCTOR Andy Simpson, clinical director for A&E at North Tees and Hartlepool, said the current crisis engulfing emergency departments is “the worst I have ever seen” in 25 years.

Dr Simpson qualified as a doctor 25 years ago and has worked as a consultant in the NHS since 1999 but he says it has “never been as bad as this”.

In common with every other NHS hospital in the region the A&E department at North Tees Hospital has been inundated with sick patients over the Christmas and New Year period.

But Dr Simpson said it is the sheer weight of numbers, day in and day out, that is posing huge problems for his staff.

“We are getting a large number of elderly patients with chest pains, chest infections, pneumonia and people with sepsis, people who need to stay in hospital,” he said.

But the problem for Dr Simpson and his colleague is the lack of space in A&E and beds in the hospital as a whole.

“We are getting to the point where all of our rooms in A&E are so so full we have to wait because we can’t move any patients through the system,” he added.

He said colleagues were waiting for beds to become free in the rest of the hospital to admit patients who needed further investigation and treatment.

“We have no slack in the system," he said.

"There is nothing left. We have reached the tipping point where we have got to consider what we are going to do because you either increase the capacity or seriously think of what else you are going to do.”

Dr John Holmes, consultant in emergency medicine and clinical lead at the University Hospital of North Durham, added: “In the last four or five weeks we have had this unprecedented sustained pressure within the emergency department. We had a 10 per cent increase in A&E activity within the trust, Durham and Darlington, over the last three weeks compared to the same time last year.”

On January 1 records show that the A&E departments at both hospitals received patients from 105 ambulances in a single day.

Like Dr Simpson, Dr Holmes said the great majority of patients brought to A&E are elderly patients with breathing problems or chest pains.

“For the last month I have not known it to be like this before." he said.

"Unfortunately there is no immediate light at the end of the tunnel. It has been going on for weeks, it is just unsustainable.”

Professor Rob Wilson, medical director at South Tees Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said the current situation in A&E is “very challenging” and there were concerns at what might happen if the weather turns very cold.

Dr Simpson urged relatively healthy young people in their 20s and 30s, who often turn up at A&E with nothing worse than a cold or a cough, to stay away .