"I am increasingly dismayed and terrified by current political targets - I am worried because the four-hour A&E wait is used as a way to maintain and increase funding. This is affecting patient safety, especially in some trusts.

"I have just finished working in ********* Hospital and the situation there is dangerous and intolerable. The trust is under-bedded and has a substantial number of blocked beds. A&E will not breach the four-hour targets under any circumstances - when a patient gets to three hours they must be moved to hit target. As a result, A&E patients are poorly assessed and then sent to the MAU [Medical Assessment Unit] to sit in the corridor or day room. Since Christmas, there have been more than 10 extra patients on the corridor on a regular basis. I have, over the past two months, had a patient with severe DKA [out-of-control diabetes requiring emergency treatment] sent up and admitted to ICU [Intensive Care Unit] from a chair in the day room. I have a dossier of cases not fit for the corridor [these include heart failure, severe pneumonia, a heroin overdose and an epileptic fit lasting at least 30 minutes]. The wait for a bed is then often more than four hours. A&E remains empty.

"They cannot be cared for safely and it is only a matter of time before someone dies. I am not advocating a return to the old days with massive A&E waits but don't see why patients should move from an acute area to an unstaffed corridor to hit targets. I can even tolerate 'well' patients sat in a corridor but some of these are critically ill." The registrar's words, and in particular the example of a patient with life-threatening, out-of-control diabetes sent from casualty to sit in a day room to meet a target, and then admitted to intensive care, are shocking.

There are three key points from this story:

1. The statistics on waiting should not be trusted. Just because you are moved to a corridor, does not mean you have stopped waiting. The statistics are useless as a measure of performance because they are being manipulated.

2. The Government's use of targets can actually endanger life. It certainly causes a lower standard of care. Leaving seriously ill patients in unstaffed corridors, is a reckless, ruthless, uncaring way of looking after them.

3. There is a culture of fear now in the NHS. This registrar did not want to be named. For more evidence of this culture of fear, see chapter three of The Welfare State We're In.

The registrar's testimony appeared in The Sunday Telegraph.