For Bundaberg woman Abbi, the numbers don't lie.
She's hoping to enrol in a Diploma of Nursing to join Queensland's health workforce, but she also knows what it's like to be on the other side as a patient waiting hours and hours for medical help.
Abbi, whose surname has been withheld for privacy reasons, said earlier this year, she waited 10 hours to see a nurse at the Bundaberg Hospital Emergency Department while in "a hell of a lot of pain" after falling at home.
"It then took another two or three hours to see a doctor," she said.
"Then they took X-rays and it took them four hours to get the X-rays back."
Abbi said her pain was "horrific" while she waited for help.
"They don't even give you pain medicine," she said.
"You're just sitting there in pain and no-one's helping you, no-one's paying you any attention."
Longest wait times
Abbi is not surprised by new data showing where she lives is the worst in Queensland when it comes to public hospital ED wait times.
Queensland Health figures revealed after a parliamentary question on notice showed the Wide Bay's three public hospitals – Bundaberg, Hervey Bay and Maryborough — had the highest number of patients who stayed in an ED longer than 24 hours.
The data showed 3,476 patients who presented to a Wide Bay Hospital and Health Service (WBHHS) ED stayed longer than 24 hours in the 2022-23 financial year to date.
The second-highest was Metro South Hospital and Health Service at 2,085 patients.
In a statement, the WBHHS said throughout a patient's stay in an ED, they were receiving treatment, monitoring and care.
Chief operating officer Ben Ross-Edwards said the health service was committed to providing "comprehensive and appropriate care".
"Discharge or transfer does not occur unless it is safe and appropriate to do so, regardless of the length of stay," Mr Ross-Edwards said.
Figures from a separate question on notice showed that among Queensland's 26 reporting hospitals, Bundaberg Hospital had some of the longest overall ED wait times in the past quarter.
In October 2022, the longest wait time was 606 minutes (10.1 hours), while in December it was second-longest at 559 minutes (9.31 hours), behind Brisbane's Princess Alexandra at 613 minutes (10.21 hours).
By January this year, it had blown out to 677 minutes (11.28 hours).
The WBHHS experienced a 31 per cent increase in Category 1 patients presenting with an emergency life-threatening condition between October and December.
In her response to the question on notice, Health Minister Yvette D'ath said there could be a number of reasons why a patient stayed in an ED for more than 24 hours.
"This may include patients with volatile clinical status requiring repeated adjustments to treatment interventions and clinical decision making," Ms D'ath said.
"There may be other factors including the requirement for a specific type of bed, such as telemetry, negative pressure, isolation or mental health."
'We do have a crisis'
LNP Member for Burnett Stephen Bennett said the wait times were "disappointing and desperately frustrating".
"Our patients, our families and our communities deserve so much better," he said.
Mr Bennett said he wanted the authorities to acknowledge there was a problem and do something about it.
"Unless you put doctors and nurses back in charge and you get rid of the bureaucracy … we end up seeing these deteriorating circumstances," he said.
"We want to see that we really start to do more triaging, make more beds available, and more importantly, make sure funding is reaching the areas where it's needed.
"We do have a crisis in Bundaberg and we're hoping that can be resolved."
For Abbi, enrolling to study nursing is her own way of helping to solve the problem.
"There definitely needs to be more beds, there definitely needs to be more staffing, I think there needs to be more of a passion to work in this sector," she said.
"It's disrespectful to those who are disabled like myself, and to those who do have bones sticking out, and can't walk or are in wheelchairs.
"The wait times are just absolutely horrid and you don't get treated very well."
