The picture was posted by Stuart Gould on Facebook yesterday and has already been shared nearly 40,000 times.
It comes after Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt was accused of suggesting consultants did not work Saturdays and Sundays, or evenings – due to a “Monday to Friday” culture – and said patients were dying as a result.
In a despairing message to the Tory Minister, Mr Gould, a consultant surgeon at North West London NHS Trust, said: “This is me. 10pm tonight. I am not on call. But I have come back to the hospital because my particular skills are needed.
“I am mopping the floor between operations to help the theatre staff so we can start the next case sooner.”
Painting a bleak picture of life in the NHS the surgeon says his team of “young trainees” have stayed “well beyond the call of duty” to get a patient into theatre.
