Emergency medicine
care and require them to report on progress to Parliament every six months.
l Turbo-charge a peer learning programme for hospitals and local health organisations (Integrated Care Boards) to share proven solutions, tackle barriers to discharge and protect and support NHS staff.
l Work at pace to implement the 10-Year Health Plan, especially the ‘hospital to home’ shift and creation of a Neighbourhood Health Service, ensuring social care and the Voluntary, Community, Social and Faith Based Enterprises (VCSFE) are fully played in – so fewer older people need to come to A&E in the first place.
Case Study Susan, 78, lives alone in South London. Despite living with heart problems Susan has stayed independent – but, in the summer of 2023, she suffered a heart attack. She drove herself to hospital. With no beds available, she remained on a couch in a curtained-off area near A&E. That couch would be her bed for the next 13 hours. Susan describes the atmosphere as intense
and relentless. She could hear other people shouting in pain and there was no privacy. She also recalls people dying around her. “I was next to a man who was clearly very
unwell. I could hear everything. He was on his own for quite a while and then his wife joined him. Later his wife was ushered away, and he was wheeled off. I’m certain he died. And he died right next to me.” Susan believes she witnessed a second death that day: “Opposite me, I heard the defibrillator going again and again. The doctor shouted, ‘stand clear’, then silence. The doctor used the expression, “we’re
calling it at” to determine the time of death which coincided with the time on my watch.” Around 1am, 22 hours after she had originally
suffered a heart attack, Susan was moved into intensive care. Eleven months later Susan experienced another heart attack. Due to an ambulance strike she drove herself to hospital for a second time. Again, she was placed on a couch in an emergency area and observed the chaos around her: “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The corridors were lined with patients on hard couches, hooked up to drips, some moaning in pain, some exposed. It reminded me of war films, just beds and queues and people suffering.” These conditions have left her fearful of ever
returning.
A definition of corridor care Corridor care is closely linked to long waits in A&E. It refers to the practice of providing care to patients in hospital corridors or other non-designated areas and inappropriate care settings. These may be called temporary care environments (TCE) or temporary escalation spaces (TES). Age UK refers specifically to older people in this situation who are forced to wait in unsuitable surroundings before formally transferring onto a ward. These can include corridors, or re-purposed cupboards, often on a trolley, sometimes a hard chair, even in more extreme cases in toilets. These places are often uncomfortable, noisy, anything but private, and under-staffed. There is also commonly a lack of facilities: it’s difficult to get food or water or access a toilet. Also, the non-ward spaces lack access to equipment such as access to oxygen, cardiac monitors, suction and other lifesaving equipment. In short, it’s not where patients want to be if they are very unwell, whatever their age. Ultimately, Age UK concludes that the NHS is seeing ‘practice creep’ of corridor care becoming increasingly common in hospital wards and bays, in older people being held in ambulances for extended periods, and in inappropriate discharge facilities (none of which are captured in the 12- hour wait statistics). The organisation says that it fears these practices may be putting off some older people from going to hospital at all, even if they are very ill.
CSJ
References 1. NHS England (2025) Freedom of Information request by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine. Unpublished internal communication. 2. Age UK analysis of NHS England (2025)
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www.clinicalservicesjournal.com I January 2026
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