The nurse also revealed the amount of time she thought it would take for those waiting to be seen – and it wasn’t good news for anyone.

“Our current wait time for a doctor is seven-and-a-half hours,” she explained. “I will estimate that by the time I go home in the morning at eight o’clock, some of you will still be here waiting for a doctor, because the wait will get up to 12 or 13 hours, I will expect that.”

It follows after a new report also found more than 1,000 people are waiting more than 12 hours in A&E departments every day.

The study from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine showed an average of 1,047 people a day were waiting more than 12 hours in A&E.

Dr Adrian Boyle, vice president of the RCEM, said: “These figures are staggering and show the critical state of the urgent and emergency care system.”

In a statement, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals NHS Trust said: “We are sorry the patient was forced to wait with us longer than we would all like for a suitable mental health bed. Our staff did everything they could to make her as comfortable as possible in a single, private room while we regularly liaised with Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust to find suitable specialist accommodation, which is not provided at our hospitals.”

Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust has been approached for comment.

NHS crisis: woman waits over 8 days in A&E in “the longest such wait seen in the NHS”