Patient groups are to scrutinise accident and emergency departments on Monday to find out how long people are waiting for treatment.

Volunteers will visit casualty departments across the UK to get a snapshot of the situation facing the NHS.

A&E has been at the forefront of the winter flu crisis, which has seen hospitals running at, or close to, full capacity.

The annual survey is carried out by Community Health Councils (CHCs) in England and Wales and will this year for the first time also involve their equivalents in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Last year's survey uncovered a series of worrying cases of patients waiting long periods for treatment.

In one case, an 84-year-old man with diarrhoea and vomiting had been waiting 28 hours for a side ward in a Birmingham hospital.

And in a Kent hospital a 33-year-old woman with abdominal pain had been waiting almost 24 hours for a bed.

Solutions

The Royal College of Nursing will be surveying nurses in charge of A&E departments at the same time to gain a better understanding of the causes of long waits, and what solutions are available.

Donna Covey, director of the Association of Community Health Councils for England and Wales, said: "Many people have been worried by press coverage of the flu outbreak and the impact on intensive care units.

"This survey will give a picture of the knock-on effects on A&E wards."

The British Association for Accident and Emergency Medicine (BAEM), which represents doctors working in casualty departments, said it expected the results of the survey would have been more worrying if they had been carried out at the peak of the flu crisis.

Mr John Ryan, spokesman for BAEM and an A&E consultant in Brighton, said: "However, from speaking to colleagues around the country, many of them are still finding it a little bit tight. Most hospitals are running at almost 100% capacity."

He added: "They will find people who have been waiting in a similar way to last year, I wouldn't expect a great swing one way or another."

He said that when long waits are uncovered, there are sometimes good reasons for this, such as the man waiting for a side room in the hospital because of an infectious disease, which was a very rare situation.