The son of an 87-year-old woman says she would “rather die” than return to Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

This damning condemnation came after Mark Holmes and his mother Averil Holmes, who suffers with dementia, waited outside the hospital for over three hours in the back of an ambulance on Monday evening. 

Mr Holmes, who is his mum’s carer, counted as many as 18 emergency vehicles queued outside the A&E department - some even ran out of space to park.

Mr Holmes, 61, said paramedics could be seen chasing down the tea trolley so they could get food and drink for hungry patients.

Others were crying in one another’s arms because of extreme pressures.

At one point, Mr Holmes and his mother were even transferred into another ambulance before entering A&E as the crew had spent so long waiting to discharge them their shift had finished.

He said: “If mum was taken ill again, I don’t think I’d take her in the ambulance. 

“I don’t think she’d want to go, she’d have to be dragged.

“It’s difficult because I have a responsibility, I’m a full time carer, if I think that she needs urgent care that might be able to reverse the problem, what am I supposed to do?

“To be quite honest, I think she’d rather die here than have treatment, and that’s tough to have to say.”

Mr Holmes said that when they were finally transferred to the hospital’s care, his mother spent all night on the A&E ward.

She was moved four separate times throughout the early hours of the morning to cubicles that Mr Holmes said were both “noisy and cold”.

This is the second time that Mr Holmes and his mother have faced lengthy waits in as many weeks.

On Friday, November 5, Mr Holmes phoned for an ambulance at the advice of his mother’s GP after a bad episode of severe hypertension had caused her to have a fall.

After waiting 45 minutes for the ambulance to arrive, the pair faced further delays of five hours outside A&E, despite being promised a fast track into the medical admissions unit.

Mr Holmes said it then took an additional four hours for his mother to be transferred from her trolley and into a bed.

However, regardless of his experiences at the hospital, he insisted staff were not to blame.

“The ambulance crews were great, it was a privilege to be with them, I have to say.

“They really put themselves out, they phoned ahead when they picked mum up from home to allow me to go with her in the ambulance as she suffers from dementia. 

“I can’t blame individuals for the state of the hospital, they’re working with these problems.

“I see people doing their best. 

“On Monday night I saw female crew members in each other’s arms in tears - it is affecting everybody down there.

“The truth is they’re just all suffering from the same problems. The hospital isn’t big enough, patients aren’t getting into the wards enough, and because of that workers are leaving the service in droves.

“If what’s happening at the minute isn’t a major incident, I don’t know what is.”

Yesterday, a Worcester paramedic sent an open letter to Sajid Javid, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pleading for urgent help for the NHS within the county.

Matthew Hopkins, Chief Executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: “Staff across our Emergency Departments are working incredibly hard to ensure that patients get the help they need, as quickly and as safely as possible.

“We know that long waits, either outside or inside our hospitals, mean that our patients do not get the experience of care that we would want, which is why we are working so hard to address the challenges we face.

“We are extremely grateful to our colleagues in the Ambulance Service and other local healthcare partners who are working harder than ever to improve patient experience, reduce waiting times and help to ease the problems caused by ambulances being delayed outside our hospitals, despite unprecedented levels of demand for our urgent and emergency care services.

“Members of the public can help us reduce ambulance delays by using NHS 111 online to get advice on the most appropriate service rather than call 999 unless it’s a life-threatening emergency.”