New figures reveal ambulance patients waiting longer than they should to be handed over to A&E staff

The Royal College of Nursing, a staff body for the profession, said the healthcare system was "dangerously close to overheating completely".

NHS England statistics reveal 48 (9%) patients waited in an ambulance for at least one hour when they arrived at Northumbria Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust A&E in the week to Sunday (December 18) – up from 47 (8%) the week before.

A further 113 patients were forced to wait between 30 minutes and one hour, meaning 29% of the 547 total ambulance arrivals were delayed by half-an-hour or more, and at least 65 hours were lost.

The figures cover the week before a 24-hour strike by ambulance staff across England and Wales over complaints of poor working conditions and pay.

NHS targets state trusts should complete 95% of all ambulance handovers in 30 minutes, with all conducted in less than one hour.

More than 16,300 handover delays an hour or longer were recorded across all hospital trusts last week, according to NHS England – up 31% from 12,500 the week before.

It meant 46,000 hours was lost to delays in handing patients over, a significant rise from 29,000 hours recorded a week prior.

A handover delay does not always mean a patient has waited in the ambulance as they could have been moved into an A&E department, but the handover was not completed.

Ambulance staff walked out on Tuesday, December 21, and are expected to do so again tomorrow (Wednesday).

Further strike action by staff at five ambulance services on January 11 and January 23 was also announced by trade union Unison this week.

A spokesperson for Northumbria Healthcare said: “NHS trusts and the rest of the health and care system are working hard to ensure that patients who need emergency care are seen as quickly as possible and are prioritising patient care as best they can.

"This includes a significant focus on ambulance handover times. We ask that people please only access A&E if they have a serious or life-threatening condition. It is likely that patients with non-emergency conditions who attend A&E will have a long wait.”