The NHS doesn’t have the best reputation at the moment – you only had to watch two minutes of any election debate to hear “waiting lists” and “backlog” crop up.

With the stretching of resources currently preying on everyone’s mind, how good is our national institution when it's needed? Not so bad it turns out.

Recently I had to pay a visit to Burnley Hospital’s Urgent Care Unit with some concerning symptoms.

I arrived at 2pm, walked in and quickly filled out an iPad with some basic information before joining a short queue for reception.

At the reception, I told a very friendly staff member the upshot of what was wrong with me: tiredness, dehydration, basically a mix of things you don’t wish for on your Christmas list.

I then went and sat down in a fairly busy waiting room, a digital banner reading, “waiting time is approximately four hours”, repeatedly speeding across my vision.

But to my surprise that wasn’t the case at all, five minutes after sitting down I was called into a treatment room to test my blood sugar levels.

Thankfully they were 5.2 so within the normal range and I was then sent back into the waiting room with an appointment promised an hour later.

I’ll be honest, from the way it’s talked about, I didn’t think service like that went on in the NHS.

And okay, my hour-long wait for an appointment did turn into two hours and 10 minutes but they had previously ruled out a serious condition so I wasn’t as urgent anymore.

After my wait was over, I got the usual works – blood pressure, blood oxygen test, stethoscopes.

I was then sent straight through for a chest x-ray, which took place around 10 minutes later.

I came through the doors at 2pm, and by 5pm I’d been given the all-clear and told it was a bad infection after my x-ray had been viewed.

So in fairness, the whole picture that’s sometimes painted of the NHS being a broken and barely usable system that will leave you waiting six hours before you’re even seen just wasn’t true in my case.

The staff were brilliant and clearly under a lot of pressure, but they handled it with professionalism and are a real treasure.