PATIENTS are being piled up, staff are overrun and Great Western Hospital is bursting at the seams according to television presenter Jeremy Kyle.

The tabloid talk show host praised the dedication of doctors and nurses at Swindon’s leading hospital, but told of the difficulties his own family faced visiting the site last year.

In his column in The Sun today, the 49-year-old addressed the current crises in NHS hospitals across the nation and where the money being spent on it is being wasted.

He said: “This isn't war-torn Syria I'm talking about, this is bloody Swindon!

“I'd love to say I don't recognise the picture being painted of our paralysed NHS, but I do. I know it all too well.

“Not so long back my eldest daughter attended the Great Western Hospital in Swindon.

“It took them six attempts to get the right diagnosis and for four months we went back and forth to a place that seemed like it was bursting at the seams.

“Now, I can't complain about the doctors and nurses we encountered — they were lovely and ultimately did a fantastic job.

“But even I could see that these brilliant, dedicated professionals were giving their all but struggling to make headway.

“They were overrun and overwhelmed and it was almost as if you could hear the system creaking.

“Patients were piling up left, right and centre, it was busy and noisy and the stress was etched on everyone's faces.

“You would have thought they were dealing with a major one-off incident like a train crash but no, these were just regular days in the life of the Great Western.

“And this was before the winter choked off what little spare capacity any of our hospitals had in the warmer months.”

The comments come at the end of a week in which GWH postponed routine surgical operations for four consecutive days.

Staff have spent the week dealing with a backlog of an exceptionally busy weekend, with 667 patients arriving at accident and emergency across two days.

A spokesman for Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust said: "Like hospitals across the country, we've had our busiest year ever and despite this our staff continue to provide good care for the hundreds of thousands of people we see and treat over that period.

"Anyone with any concerns about any care they or a loved one receives should speak to nursing staff whilst in hospital so we solve any issues for the patient."