A busy hospital battling long waiting times has advised people not to attend A&E unless it is an "immediate life-threatening" condition.

Under pressure Medway Maritime Hospital in Gillingham has informed people its Emergency Department (ED) is busy and to only attend in serious circumstances.

It comes a week after hospital bosses declared a critical incident and prioritised services to protect the most vulnerable patients.

One woman has been at A&E with a relative for more than 20 hours.

She said: "I arrived at 5.30pm last night for some follow up blood tests. They were worried by other symptoms so wanted an x-ray, ECG and more bloods.

"It went fairly smoothly till midnight-ish where we had no direct contact since 3am when we were told we couldn't go home, but they didn't have a bed so he needed to stay in waiting room until the consultant came round."

Many patients have been similar stories of waiting for hours at the hospital which was last week running at "extremely high levels of occupancy" and is facing a significant rise in demand for its services.

The Medway NHS Foundation Trust advised anyone needing help fast to call the NHS 111 number or visit its website.

You can find out the waiting times at any of the county’s minor injury units or urgent treatment centres by downloading the WaitLess app to your phone.

The app is available from the iPhone and Google play stores.

Medway NHS Foundation Trust has been approached for more information.