The National Health Service is revered across the world for being one of the best. In 2014, it came out as the number one healthcare system compared with Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and USA.
Figures from last year show that the NHS deals with one million patients every 36 hours.
There were nearly 23 million patients who came through the Accident and Emergency doors in 2015/16 which is 22 percent higher than the decade before.
Doctors and nurses are incredible pillars of the community and a lot of their work goes unnoticed.
Credit: PA
One of those is Gautam Das, who was a senior consultant surgeon in the NHS for 26 years. He's now retired but has thought about whether to put the scrubs back on.
He's described to the Mirror how raw and emotional his job has been. He told a story of when a woman came in shortly before Christmas after her boyfriend accidentally kicked her.
Gautum says: "Weirdly, the kick was light and the flesh looked fine, but I didn't like the look of her: she was pale and seemed delirious. Sure enough, she'd bled so badly internally her haemoglobin was dangerously low. She needed surgery.
"When I opened her up, I couldn't see anything - just a blue-red throbbing mass. The blood spill was enormous and that's the only time in my entire career I've sworn in surgery. It turned out she had an under-lying kidney problem, and the slightest tap had caused it to rupture."
Credit: Twitter/Gautum Das
He's done hundreds of surgeries over the course of his career and says he could easily work through 14 hour shifts without a lunch break while doing 10 minor operations.
But he also described who he doesn't like seeing.
Gautum says: "There is one thing I can't abide - the drunken brigade. Fighting and vomiting, wasting precious NHS time...Well, I have little sympathy for them. It's always more important to see someone who's had a heart attack than some idiot who has a gash in the head because of a drunken brawl."
He explains that, coming from Calcutta, India, it's impressive to see a country with a completely free healthcare service. As a trainee he lost a young boy to a rare bone cancer and he vividly remembers his dad begging him to do something to help.
Gautum's message should resonate with everyone who uses the NHS - don't take it for granted.
Featured Image Credit: PATopics: NHS