Two paramedics fed-up with abuse from patients have gone viral with a singing video demanding R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Laura Fennell and Victoria Town belt out the Aretha Franklin classic in footage viewed more than 20,000 times after being posted on social media.

The pair, who work in the Ramsgate area, shared the clip shortly after 4am yesterday during a night shift after being spoken to rudely by a patient.

Speaking at the start of the video, Laura says: "We need cheering up because we had a patient today who wasn't very nice to us - rude, very rude.

"We feel that as an emergency service, we don't really deserve to be spoken to like that, nor does anyone working.

"But we are going to do something about it to cheer ourselves up because what we want is for these people to show us a little something that Aretha knows about."

Laura, who lives in Deal, and Victoria, from Canterbury, then dance to and mouth the words to the 1967 hit Respect.

Victoria rounds off the clip by shouting: "Come on, big up the respect."

South East Coast Ambulance Service, the NHS branch Laura and Victoria work for, praised the paramedics for their "positive approach".

A spokesman said: "We take the matter of anyone who verbally abuses our staff extremely seriously and encourage staff to report all incidents.

"Thankfully, the number of people who think this kind of behaviour is acceptable is very low but one incident is one too many and ambulance staff should not be exposed to abuse of any kind.

"We welcome the manner in which this crew showed camaraderie and a positive approach to helping each other following an unpleasant experience and also in how they raised awareness of this issue."