With record numbers of patients on waiting lists, the longest ever handover times for ambulances, thousands of medics leaving the profession, and the looming threat of further significant industrial action, the NHS is in crisis.

In a special report today, the Yorkshire Post has spoken to patients, frontline doctors and nurses, GPs, social care bosses and Government officials to get a complete picture of the scale of the challenge our National Health Service is facing.

Dr Dr Vassili Crispi, co-chairman of the Yorkshire Junior Doctors Committee, said staff retention needed to be the focus for the Government to avoid a total collapse of the health service.

Meanwhile the brother of a York Hospital patient described the scene as a “war zone”, as doctors and nurses scrambled to give the best care they can under the circumstances.

Ambulances waiting at an Emergency Department (A&E) at the Royal London hospital in London, as flu cases in hospitals in England are continuing to rise while ambulance handover delays have hit a new high, as the NHS continues to struggle with bed shortages and a surge in winter viruses.

In social care, which has long faced acute challenges of its own, NHS England has warned it will be discharging patients into hotel rooms, because there are so few care beds.

But this is the fault of chronic Government underinvestment, not the social care sector itself, according to a leading care home expert.

In Hull, where A&E patients are less likely to be seen within the four hour target window than anywhere else in the country, we spoke to one woman who waited 12 hours to be seen.

And paramedics, who will later this month will continue their own industrial action, have described the professional and moral difficulties in having to wait up to 12 hours to handover patients to hospital.

NHS in crisis: Special report hears harrowing tales from across the "collapsing" health service

Comment Guidelines