There's more than usual at stake today: the hospital is preparing for five consecutive strike days by its junior doctors.

The hospital's chief operating officer Tracey Moore is given a "sit rep" from managers of the hospital's key areas, including its emergency department plus speciality departments including paediatrics, haematology, obstetrics and gynaecology.

She says: "We've got loads of capacity in the virtual ward (people treated at home with the help of technology), so I think the message needs to go out to the clinical teams."

She has her own priority list, comprising the hospital's capacity, staffing cover and plans for any emergency cover in case of a major incident.

Her team report back that the hospital is in good shape. The expected junior doctor absences because of the strike are as anticipated.

As the sit rep comes to an end the hospital's emergency department is already filling up. By 9am, 12 of the 16 ED bays have patients inside.

This is the fourth doctors' strike the hospital has had to cope with. And it's also the longest.

"This is not only disruptive for the staff who have to continue to work," Ms Moore says.

She adds: "But it's hugely disruptive to patients who are waiting for operations and outpatient procedures, so I think it is an extremely difficult situation and one we wouldn't want to see going on indefinitely."

One of the patients who has been taken to hospital this morning is 84-year-old Elsie Hurst. She has type 2 diabetes and she tells me her "blood sugar levels are through the roof, so high that her machine can't even record the numbers".

Elsie spent a month as an inpatient at this hospital after a serious fall.

She didn't know there was a doctors' strike taking place when she went to hospital by ambulance this morning and tells me she hasn't spotted any noticeable fall in the level of care. And, she adds, she supports the striking medics.

"I feel for them, that they have to do it, and I feel for the nurses, they have to do it but I'm sure they'll have a decent cover and not all just suddenly walk out and just leave you empty in here," she says.

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The rest of the hospital is affected by the strikes and while patient services are compromised the emergency department must stay open. Consultants have to step in to cover striking junior doctors, but that brings its own pressure.

The hospital's chief of medicine, consultant geriatrician Dr Louise Hogh, is one of them.

She says: "It's very hard to do the job of two to three people or replicate the work of two to three people. Is it sustainable? Probably not in the long term.

"This is our fourth time of junior doctors' industrial action and it's putting a massive pressure on - not only the doctors who are stepping into those roles but also all the other allied health professionals."

Next week, Dr Hogh's consultant colleagues will go on strike for the first time. A Christmas-style rota will be in place for emergencies but it means elective work will stop. Again.

And with this scale of disruption, the government's pledge to reduce waiting lists simply can't happen. The junior doctors' mandate for industrial action ends in August and a ballot for further strikes is under way. Consultants are mandated to strike until December.

The next fortnight will be hard but the hospital will cope.

But it cannot sustain this level of pressure for the rest of the year.