Doctors have warned crippling pressures on the health service could result in “the end of the NHS as we know it” after long waiting times for care left some patients spending over 30 hours awaiting treatment.

Health secretary Humza Yousaf is facing increasing calls to quit after it emerged almost 2,000 people in Scotland spent 12 hours or more waiting in accident and emergency in the week leading up to Christmas.

The data reveals that in the week ending Sunday December 25, just 56.9% of patients in A&E were seen and then either admitted, transferred or discharged within four hours – almost 40% less than Scottish Government targets.

One woman, 92-year-old Jessie Wallace, was left on a trolley for 30 hours in scenes daughter Lynn Harrison described as “being like a warzone”, after being rushed to hospital in Edinburgh with a chest infection.

A senior medic told STV News the situation across the UK was similar against the backdrop of threats of strike action by doctors, nurses and other medical and non-medical staff.

Dr Dan Beckett, consultant physician of acute medicine, said the service was almost at a point of no return and pleaded with both the Scottish and UK Government to urgently devote resources to help ease pressures or risk unnecessary deaths.

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