Emergency care
to deliver care in the corridor.” Another, said: “A patient had a cardiac arrest in the corridor by the male toilet and died”, while another said there had been “cardiac arrests in the corridor with no crash bell, crash trolley, oxygen, defibrillator ... straddling a patient doing CPR while everyone watches on”. A nurse working in the East of England, also
said: “Patients miscarrying and returning for treatment are being bedded in the busy waiting room which is used for emergency attenders and an outpatient department.” For the first time, nursing staff also listed
the breadth of inappropriate places where care is now being delivered, far beyond emergency departments. These include bathrooms, cloakrooms, bereavement rooms and even viewing rooms where families visit deceased relatives. In some hospitals, adults are being placed in paediatric recovery rooms. One nurse from Scotland, said: “This elderly patient who was bed bound was doubly incontinent and needed a space in private to be cleaned; our only option was the charge nurse’s office.” Nursing staff also reported cancer patients being put in corridors and other inappropriate spaces. In the South West, a nurse said: “It was a cancer patient whose immunity was very low because of her treatment. She should have been in a side room. She was very upset and crying. We put screens around her but she was in the path of the staff room and toilet, so it was constantly busy. That poor lady eventually passed away.” The testimony also reveals serious concerns about infection prevention and control with patients squeezed into tight spaces next to one another. A nurse in a hospital in the South of England, said: “Multiple patients were lined up in a corridor awaiting cubicles. One patient vomited in the corridor but also vomited on another patient because they were so close
together. I was absolutely heartbroken for both of these patients.” The RCN says corridor care has become
totally normalised across NHS hospitals, as nursing staff report elderly and vulnerable patients receiving undignified treatment. A nurse working in the South East of England said: “A 90-year-old lady with dementia was scared crying and urinating in the bed after asking several times for help to the toilet. Seeing that lady, frightened and subjected to animal-like conditions is what broke me. At the end of that shift, I handed in my notice with no job to go to. I will not work where this is a normal day-to-day occurrence.” Another nurse, working in Northern Ireland, said: “I had to change an incontinent, frail patient with dementia on the corridor, by the vending machine.” More than one in four of the nursing staff
surveyed by the RCN said they were not told that the corridor they were providing care in was classed as a ‘temporary escalation space’, as described by the NHS in England. This means that risk protocols and additional measures may not be in place to ease pressures and protect patients. It follows a letter from a coalition including the RCN, BMA, Royal College of Physicians, Patients Association and Age UK which called on the Westminster Government and NHS England to publish how many patients are being cared for in corridors and all other inappropriate places. A nurse in England, said: “We are caring for almost 40 patients in corridor/overflow spaces every day. The risks are getting much higher, and the impact it has on staff morale is huge. We are all exhausted. No one started their career in nursing imagining a time like this.” RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive,
Professor Nicola Ranger, said: “This devastating testimony from frontline nursing staff shows patients are coming to harm every day, forced to endure unsafe treatment in corridors, toilets,
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and even rooms usually reserved for families to visit deceased relatives. Vulnerable people are being stripped of their dignity and nursing staff are being denied access to vital lifesaving equipment. We can now categorically say patients are dying in this situation.” Commenting on the RCN staff survey, Assistant Director of Policy, Tim Gardner, said: “Trolley waits in A&E – one measure of the problems in emergency care – hit record levels in 2024, with over half a million patients waiting over 12 hours for admission to a hospital bed. Such delays were a rarity before the pandemic but are now the worst we have seen since records began in 2011. This is a symptom of an NHS worn down by the pandemic and the decade of underinvestment that preceded it. “This report illustrates the scale of the
challenge faced by the new government, just in getting the NHS back on its feet and delivering the standards of care people expect, let alone the complexities of longer-term reform. Unfortunately, there are no quick fixes and action is needed right across the health system, including investment in additional capacity in both primary and acute care, new technology and skills to streamline services and boost productivity, as well as long overdue reform and investment in social care.”
References 1. Accessed at:
https://www.cqc.org.uk/ publications/surveys/urgent-emergency- care-survey
2. Accessed at:
www.cqc.org.uk/uecsurvey 3. Accessed at:
https://rcem.ac.uk/ae-doctors- not-confident-heading-into-winter-with- almost-all-worried-patient-safety-is-at-risk/
4. Accessed at:
https://rcem.ac.uk/emergency- departments-too-crowded-to-cope-with-a- disaster/
5. Accessed at:
www.rcn.org.uk/corridor-care- report
CSJ
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