A woman was forced to wait eight hours sat outside A&E in an ambulance due to a shortage of seats and beds at the Grange University Hospital, despite her father-in-law having had a stroke.

Collete Hume, a journalist for the BBC, wrote about her first-hand experience inside the hospital’s ‘awful’ accident and emergency unit.

Ms Hume recalled people ‘spilling out the doors onto the pavements’ and her father-in-law waiting hours for a bed after it was confirmed he had a stroke.

She said: “I waited eight hours with my partner's father in the back of an ambulance after he suffered a stroke on Monday.”

“I am trying to count the number of ambulances...11, 12, 13, no... 14, is that 15? All have patients onboard, all waiting for a bed.

“By the time he is seen by doctors, he has already been lying in the ambulance for more than two hours.

“He is taken into a side room just across the hall from resuscitation. The decontamination room. If people have been covered in chemicals or fallen into a river, they come in here to be hosed down.

“It was the only room available. This is the room where we're told: ‘It's a stroke.’

“But that shocking diagnosis doesn't mean he gets a bed. Instead, it's back to the ambulance to wait to be called for a brain scan.”

Colette spoke to paramedics, who said they leave their shifts with awful headaches from the fumes coming from the ambulances waiting for hours outside.

Paramedics also told her they believe it is the ‘lack of social care’ that is the main reason so many hours are spent waiting at this A&E department.

Difficulties in getting GP appointments could also be a factor driving people to hospitals, paramedics say.

Before getting a bed, almost eight hours since she had arrived at the A&E, a nurse told Colette that ‘every part of the emergency department is full’ with more than 140 patients needing treatment.

A spokesman for Aneurin Bevan University Health Board said: "Like other Health Boards across Wales and the rest of the UK, we are under severe pressure at the moment due to large amounts of very poorly people attending our hospitals and difficulties with discharging patients who no longer need hospital-based care.

"In turn, these delays are affecting the overall flow of patients through our hospitals and are unfortunately causing long waits in our emergency department and for ambulances.

"However, every patient is seen on arrival by staff trained to assess the seriousness of the patient's condition, and those requiring the most urgent, life-saving treatment are always prioritised.

"We are continuing to work with our colleagues in the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust to ensure the timely transfer of patients from their ambulance into our care so we can release ambulance crews as quickly as possible to enable them to respond to emergency calls in our community."