PATIENTS were turned away from Gwent's two main hospitals yesterday as surges in emergency medical admissions caused chaos.

The Royal Gwent and Nevill Hall hospitals were forced to close to all non-serious patients as the winter rush reached a climax.

Throughout the day more than half of the county's emergency ambulances were stuck outside the Royal Gwent, unable to unload their patients or respond to new 999 calls.

Health bosses said there was no single reason the crisis unfolded and blamed an 'exceptional' number of admittances with minor ailments like flu.

At one point 11 out of Gwent's 17 emergency ambulances were parked idle outside the Accident and Emergency department.

The situation was so bad the average time non-serious ambulance patients had to wait to be seen by hospital staff increased more than four-fold from 15 minutes to between one and two hours.

There were reports of patients with conditions including fractures and diabetes being treated on ambulances as the hospitals were unable to admit them.

The Royal College of Nursing today called for extra beds to be made available to avoid the sitaution happening again.

And there were calls for walk-in NHS centres to be created to deal with minor incidents and relieve stess on A&E departments.

At the Royal Gwent by yesterday lunchtime 170 patients had been seen by A&E staff; normally 200 patients are seen in an entire day.

A spokeswoman for the South Wales Ambulance Trust said: "We have just been working as hard as we can and prioritising calls."

And as the crisis unfolded Assembly Health Minister Dr Brian Gibbons announced he planned to visit all A&E departments to see for himself the pressure staff were facing and to discuss how to improve services.

Across the county patients suffered because of the shortage of beds, with all non-critical cases being diverted to Caerphilly District Miners' Hospital.

A spokesman for Gwent Healthcare Trust said: "We've been diverting non-critical patients to Caerphilly District Miners Hospital as both the Royal Gwent Hospital and Nevill Hall Hospital have been full.

"We are trying to free up more Royal Gwent beds by transferring patients who are appropriate for transfer to St Woolos Hospital.

"A&E Units in the Royal Gwent and at Nevill Hall have been very busy since early this morning and the situation has not really eased throughout the day, we are continually reviewing the situation."

Today officials confirmed the situation was 'calmer' as beds were available in both the A&E and medical assessment wards.

But the Trust spokesman confirmed they were playing 'catch-up' and yesterday's chaos would have a knock-on effect on scheduled operations, although the extent of the effect was unclear.