had issued warnings. worcestershire acute hospitals trust has confirmed that it is investigating two deaths in the past week in its a&e department. one patient died after waiting 35 hours for a ward bed elsewhere in the hospital. the president of the royal college of emergency medicine said today that the emergency care system was on its knees. there are certainly signs of very great pressure. this has been building up over years. if we look at the last year, emergency demand has gone way up beyond what you would have expected, given the growth in population. bed numbers have shrunk, the delays in discharge, which block the hospital up discharge, which block the hospital up and mean that you cannot get new patients in, that has risen. staff are starting to feel the strain. it's getting increasingly difficult to get people to do key roles in emergency medicine. a&e departments shutting their doors to patients more than 140 times in december.