A city businessman taken ill in the new year has talked of his experience at being exposed to a health service struggling to cope with unprecedented levels of demand.

Carey Miles, 49, spent four days at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital, where he encountered scenes he describes as “distressing and degrading” with staff overwhelmed by stress to the point of demoralisation.

The year has started with reports of chaos in hospitals across the country, which is seeing patients dying on beds and emergency units closing their doors to ambulances in what the Red Cross says is a humanitarian crisis.

Mr Miles, who was taken by ambulance to the hospital on New Year’s Day with acute pain, insists doctors and nurses are not ultimately to blame for the situation and says they face unimaginable levels of stress.

During his time at the hospital, he:

• Witnessed patients left on beds in corridors for hours
• Saw a man in a nappy languishing on a bed in full view of other hospital users
• Overheard staff talking about unmanageable workloads
• Heard a paramedic admit the situation in Ashford’s William Harvey Hospital was worse
• And believed he came across evidence of bed-blocking after being placed on a ward with two men whose “needs were clearly greater than that which the hospital could provide”.

Mr Miles, who lives in central Canterbury, became ill on New Year’s Eve and was visited at home by a doctor before paramedics arrived on the afternoon of January 1 to transport him to hospital.

He was placed on a wheelchair in the waiting room, where he felt searing pain every time he coughed.

“I was screaming out in pain and this was happening in front of lots of other people,” Mr Miles said.

“This was degrading and there were other people becoming visibly distressed by what I was enduring. At one point a nurse came out and said it could be two or three hours before anyone was seen.

“Having seen what was happening, a couple of people went up to the reception desk and said ‘you’ve got to see this guy’.”

Mr Miles was moved to the emergency area, where he was given pain relief and placed next to the central desk used by nurses and doctors.

It was here that he became aware of other patients in the unit and the demands being placed upon medical staff. He said: “There was a guy lying on this bed in a nappy. No one went to him for some two hours.

“On one of the walls there was a board with the names of patients on it. I could hear staff conversations about who they were going to see and I could hear them saying that they hadn’t had breaks. They were completely overwhelmed by the sheer number of people.

"It was clear that this was a situation where they were working to targets rather than the care needs of the individual patients. The stress of the environment was absolute.”

After two days in the emergency centre, Mr Miles was taken to a ward and passed three patients on beds in corridors – a scene he described as “degrading and distressing”.

On the ward he was placed opposite a man who groaned loudly several times a minute and near another man who appeared not to be mentally capable. Mr Miles suspects that both men were suffering from severe mental health problems.

He said: “It was distressing. There was no way you could sleep with that extended groan, which came every 10 or 15 seconds across the ward. It is clear their needs were clearly greater than that which the hospital could provide. The whole place also stank of faeces.”

Mr Miles was released from hospital on January 4 and insists that despite his experiences he has the “utmost sympathy and admiration for the staff”.

He added: “For the Red Cross to say this is a humanitarian crisis is a massive statement. It is clear the problems the health service faces do not arise from a lack of dedication in the staff, but rather is systemic.”

East Kent chief nurse Sally Smith admitted the trust has been “experiencing enormous pressure”, like the rest of the country.

She said: “During this busy time, which places additional demands on our staff and our resources, we always prioritise patient safety and work hard to ensure our patients’ privacy and dignity is preserved.

“Patients presenting in the emergency departments are assessed so that we can ensure we prioritise care and treatment in accordance with their need.

“If a hospital admission is required, we try to ensure this happens as quickly as possible, minimising anxiety for patients and their families.

“The staff in our emergency departments have to treat and care for patients with life-threatening conditions as well as those presenting with mental health problems or dementia.

“These patients can sometimes exhibit behaviour that may be unsettling. Patient care is our absolute priority and will continue to be so.”