It's bad enough dealing with the waiting and poor facilities and inferior standards of care due to overcrowding and understaffing as a patient. I can't imagine the stress on the staff. God knows why they want to close hospitals - they want to close our local hospital, which means the nearest A&E is 45 minutes away assuming there is no traffic (a rarity) and at least twice that at busy times. I just hope I don't need emergency care when that happens. With little in the way of out of hours GP services to take up the slack, I have no idea how patients or staff are supposed to manage. They closed one of the A&E departments in the area I used to live in (the best one, I hasten to add) and it was a nightmare. There were subsequently routine 5 or 6 hour waits on non-busy times at the next closest hospital, and the care was substandard and frequently diagnoses were incorrect. I don't understand why the government wants to continue to reduce our health care facilities and by default, our standards of care. It almost seems they won't be happy until we have one central hospital that can't see anyone for a fortnight for emergency treatment, and years for non-emergency care. Perhaps that is how they intend reducing costs and waiting lists; keep everyone waiting long enough and they either give up or die. Either way, they go away in the end.