Dr Tim Cooksley, president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said “urgent action” is required to bring the NHS back from the brink.
“There has never been a greater recognition amongst all staff that our current situation is worse than it has ever been,” Dr Tim Cooksley told Sky News.
“And I know that people watching this will say, ‘well every winter you have doctors on that say that this winter is terrible, that it’s normal winter pressures’.
“But there is a complete acceptance from all colleagues now that this is different from all previous winters – and we need urgent action now.”
He added: “This situation is much worse than we experienced under the COVID pandemic at its peak.
“And so we need to think carefully about how we can manage this and I think we need some urgent actions.”
A number of hospitals have declared critical incidents in recent days, meaning they cannot function as usual due to extraordinary pressure. Other trusts have told patients to avoid emergency departments unless their condition is life-threatening.
Dr Cooksley’s comments come after the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, Dr Adrian Boyle, said on New Year’s Day that between 300 and 500 people are dying each week because of delays in emergency care.
While Dr Ian Higginson, the vice-president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said he was in “no doubt” there was a risk to patients as he warned some A&E departments are in a “complete state of crisis”.
Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, emergency consultant Dr Higginson said on Sunday: “Emergency departments are in a really difficult and in some cases a complete state of crisis right now… and in many cases we are unable to provide care at the standard we would like.”
“There’s no doubt that if you can’t get an ambulance to someone who’s having a heart attack or a stroke, that some of those patients are going to come to harm and may die as a result of that.
“And there’s no doubt that when we’re trying to treat frail, elderly vulnerable patients on trolleys in corridors that we can’t do the best thing by them.”
In November, more than 37,000 people waited more than 12 hours in A&E for a decision to be admitted to a hospital department, according to data from NHS England. This was more than triple the equivalent figure for November 2021, when an estimated 10,646 waited longer than 12 hours.
Chris Hopson from NHS England said it was evident that the NHS was “under significant pressure at the moment” which he said could result in patients waiting longer for treatment.
He told BBC Radio 5 Live he feels “deeply uncomfortable” about the level of care sometimes being provided at moments of pressure.But he said care needed to be taken “jumping to conclusions about excess mortality rates and their cause without a really full and detailed look at the evidence”.
He said a study of the evidence was “under way”, but until detailed work is conducted “it’s really difficult to say”.
