A WHISTLEBLOWER warned NHS bosses about overcrowding in A&E a year before a paramedic raised the alarm about patients being treated on trolleys.

The former hospital worker raised concerns 12 months before paramedic Stuart Gardner criticised standards at Worcestershire Royal Hospital.

However, the trust claim they have listened to the concerns raised by the former worker and responded to each of them.

Mr Gardner, also a Unison rep, has since received an apology from Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust after he was banned from hospitals in Worcester and Redditch for making remarks which reduced staff 'to tears'.

Mr Gardner told the BBC he thought care was unsafe on a BBC TV interview, referring to 18 patients on trolleys in A&E corridors at Worcester on January 2. The trust did not dispute his description but denied patient safety was compromised.

The second whistleblower, who wished to have his identity protected and has since left the job at Worcester, first raised concerns in January last year and had a face-to-face meeting with chief executive Penny Venables and chief operating officer Stewart Messer. However, bosses at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust say they have responded to his concerns, creating additional patient assessment areas within A&E while agreeing a safe ambulance offloading procedure and creating an urgent care area in the department staffed by GPs for patients who do not need A&E care.

The hospital has ten nursing spaces within the corridor which are designated for treating patients and can be screened off and are staffed to the NICE safer staffing guidelines (one nurse to every four patients), the trust says.

But the man said: "I'm not surprised to see the situation is still the same. I continually mentioned the treatment of patients and was told to shut up. Dignity and patient confidentiality go out of the window.

"There is a lack of dignity and respect. I have seen stickers with patient details stuck on the floor. I have come across sharps and bodily fluids. The whole hospital is creaking at the floorboards. It makes me angry. Staff are working hard. I'm not criticising the medical staff. It's not right. We're not a third world country. The management knows what's going on and they choose to stick their heads in the sand. I just don't want Worcester to be part of another Mid Staffs (reference to the scandal at Stafford Hospital in which there was a high death rate among patients)."

The man said he had reported these issues to both to the trust and to the health and social care regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC). A meeting then took place between the worker and Penny Venables and Stewart Messer in July last year.

He added he had often seen a similar situation to that described by paramedic Stuart Gardner with trolleys stretching 'as far as the eye can see'.

He said: "I'm a whistleblower who has been silenced. No-one dares say anything because your head would be taken off. But the people of Worcester deserve better than what they're getting. Stuart Gardner is right - 110 per cent."

In a letter to the man chief executive Penny Venables wrote said: "I do hope we managed to reassure you that we are sited and are taking action on some of the significant pressures I know are felt right across the trust in relation to emergency admissions we have seen recently."

Mrs Venables said in a statement today: "The trust categorically refutes the individual's suggestions that it has chosen ‘to stick their heads in the sand’. The issues raised by the individual were already known to the trust and have been acted upon. The individual was listened to by his managers, the human resources department and the chief executive. The individual cannot claim to have been silenced when he was listened to at every level of the organisation. We have a whistleblowing policy which we regularly promote and it is used by members of staff to raise concerns.

"The Care Quality Commission has been involved. A thorough investigation was undertaken into each of the concerns raised with the CQC and none of them were found to have any substantiation."