This is just before 10:00 GMT at the Royal Free Hospital in North London.

Raymond Dubberry is 81 and suffers from pneumonia. Her hair is thinning, she is very thin and very thin. The skin hangs from its organs. He was shifted from his care home here, he is not eating much.

Hope he may be discharged soon, but he does not like his care home and does not want to go back.

Advisor of elderly care, Dr. Khai Lee Chah put his hand. Raymond tells him that he wants to live somewhere and he will be happy.

“I take you perfectly,” she tells Raymond. “That your care should be to stay at home somewhere, and not only to die somewhere.”

I am spending 24 hours for a glimpse of the challenges faced by NHS as it struggles with rapid winter pressure.

For patients like Raymond, who do not have a family, hospital workers have become social workers – a point of human contact at a time when social care sector is under stress.

This is a dilemma for medical staff, in which 15–30% of patients have to be discharged medically, but unable to go home, for numerous reasons.

The hospital has its own discharge team – whose job is safely to get patients out of the door, to free the bed for new entry. Only 14,000 people who are medically fit, they are still in English hospitals and cannot go home, through their own faults.

In the Royal Free London Trust, there are 275 people who are occupying beds, which do not need three major sites. The trust has about 20% of all beds.

The discharge team has been on the phone with Faye Rogers, a removal company. She is trying to find someone to go to a patient’s house to move a cupboard in the bedroom to make someone a place for a required hospital bed.

“This is the kind of issue that we have to deal with daily,” she says.

“Sometimes a family member has the key to a patient’s house, and they have gone on leave. Some patients forget the major code for their front door, so no one can go inside. Problems are worldly and regular but it is difficult for people to be discharged and they are a regular event. “

The mid-sphere is easily the most quiet time during our 24 hours of royal free, with some ambulance staff we warns that things will change as day-to-day. And they are right.

From about 8 o’clock, more and more patients change in A&E, pedestrians and ambulances. All assessment sections where patients are harassed on arrival, quickly fills and in continuous use for the next five hours.

It leads to a spillover in the corridors, with patients in wheelchairs, on hospital beds and gurneys filling all available spaces. Wards on both sides are also full. It is tight and disappointing – but a familiar view in hospitals across England.

Around 10 o’clock we come to Kathleen Hill, who are 86 years old, who are sitting in a wheelchair among those in the corridor. He has a face injury and a bloody nose.

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A man lying on a ghanny begins groaning in a man less than 5 feet (1.5 m) in the corridor. Islam is its, who is 72 years old, wearing an oxygen mask and surrounded by pain in his leg. He has been waiting in the corridor for about three hours.

Their mourning and groan grows loudly, as they write on the garn. Eventually a friend who is with him manages to find a nurse to get some pain reliever drugs.

For patients waiting in the corridor, there is no privacy. Some people cannot argue all dignity on public performance with their pain and diseases, oxygen bottles and intravenous drip.

Then suddenly, an emergency alarm closes. One of the wards is a patient in a seizure. On duty on doctors and nurses, professional, as usual, straight heads to their bed, at least six or seven people. They need to bring him fast to the revival area to save his life. But they can barely make their way out of the ward, because due to all the patients in the corridor.

After a while an ambulance leaves a person with mental health problems, who has cut himself into the lower abdomen with a knife. Despite the self-abuses and his mental state, the ambulance staff told the on-duty nurse that the outside mental health evaluation service Cass refused to intervene, saying that the patient was not in crisis.

The duty nurse shared his head in mistrust, writing the details. Once again the Royal Free A&E is being left to carry a can for another agency.

Resident Doctor Charlie Hall, who is on duty, tells me that he comes from a long line of doctors. “This is not the healthcare for which I signed up at the age of 17,” he says.

“Reach of services, I think, peak for patients and the ability to provide high quality care is pending. Many patients are very dissatisfied what is happening, and I do not blame them. There are best treatment and best option in the hospital, but you can only apologize. “

When our filming ends, we learn that Raymond Dabberry has died in the ward.

For just 24 hours, we saw NHS closely, fighting hard every day.