A&E patients are being treated in a hospital room where relatives say goodbye to their dead loved ones - showing the city's overstretched Royal is still in crisis.

Health bosses said staff only treat patients in the 'viewing room' at Worcester's emergency department when the hospital is very busy.

However, a Worcestershire Royal Hospital employee and a health watchdog say the practice should not be happening.

Peter Pinfield, chairman of Healthwatch Worcestershire, said: "Speaking on behalf of the public and loved ones, it's really not the place we should be using to put patients that are waiting for care.

"It's a very sensitive area. It's a private and quite personal time and that kind of facility should not be used for anything other than what it was designed for."

A porter at the hospital, who did not want to be named, said: "When a patient dies from 'resus' [the resuscitation area] they put the patient into the viewing room and then you go and say your last goodbyes to them.

"If they haven't got a viewing in there then they use it as a treatment room - when it's packed.

"Would you like to be treated in there? A patient could have passed away with a clinical disease."

The porter also said patients should not be treated in the room because there are no oxygen tanks on the walls.

The whistleblower added that the practice has been going on for more than a year.

A spokesman for Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust said: “There is space within the emergency department at Worcester which is used, when necessary, for relatives to use as a viewing room when their loved ones have passed away.

“At times of peak demand when the department is very busy, in order to protect patients’ privacy and dignity, this space is sometimes used to carry out observations or procedures such as ECGs [electrocardiograms].

"The room is only used clinically if the room isn’t in use as a viewing room – and vice versa.

“Staff across our Trust continue to work hard to provide the safest care they can for patients in the face of continuing pressures on beds, particularly on our Worcester site."

The spokesman added that the trust is building a discharge lounge, wards and a bridge connecting to the main hospital to relieve pressure on the Worcester site.