A damning new report reveals the harrowing reality of 'corridor care' within the NHS, highlighting widespread patient harm and staff exhaustion. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) report, based on the experiences of over 5,000 nurses, exposes disturbing situations where patients are treated in unsuitable locations, left without adequate care, and are at risk due to overcrowding and staffing shortages. The report calls for immediate government action to address the crisis.
This is not nursing, this is firefighting', one nurse said in a damning report on the state of the NHS . The experiences of more than 5,000 nursing staff across the UK highlight how patients are ‘routinely coming to harm’ and going undiscovered for hours, while sick people are being left to soil themselves due to a lack of beds, according to a harrowing report into the state of the NHS .
Shocking testimony from nurses reveals patients being treated in bathrooms, cupboards, cloakrooms and even viewing rooms where families visit deceased relatives. In some hospitals, female patients are miscarrying in corridors, while others say they cannot provide CPR quickly enough to patients having heart attacks. The experiences of more than 5,000 nursing staff across the UK, with more than 4,000 from England, contained within the 460-page report highlight how patients are “routinely coming to harm” and deaths are happening, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said. Patients are sitting for days in chairs – so-called “chair care” – due to a lack of beds, patients piling up in corridors, delays to treatment and the elderly unable to get help due to no call bells and not enough staff.“Patients have died on trollies and chairs in the corridor and waiting room. All the fundamentals of care have broken down – we are no better than a developing world casualty,” one nurse reported.The report comes just days after a hospital in north London advertised for a corridor nurse, as the NHS grapples with a winter crisis of rising pressures. Recent days have seen more than a dozen hospitals declaring critical incidents as a “quad-demic” of flu, Covid, norovirus, and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) all put a strain on the health service’s resources.“Patients sometimes wait in emergency department for over 35 hours to go to a ward, just to be put in the corridor. The system is broken.” “Department overwhelmed, which is a daily occurrence…At its worse asking someone to go round and make sure people are still alive.” “No bedside tables, patient unable to reach water and food. No bedside chairs, patients kept in bed at all times. No call bells, patient unable to call for help.” “Regularly have 25+ patients in a corridor with no privacy or dignity to be examined or have personal care. This inflicts horrendous moral injury in all staff who work in this environment.” “I worked throughout Covid-19 and although was a horrendous experience, this lack of care in the broken system is worse.” “The last patient we had had to be changed for faeces in the store cupboard. Totally inappropriate, and truly awful for the patient.” “We have one cubicle space that is for corridor assessment and toileting – but is often busy, so delays in toileting resulting in people laying in their own urine/faeces.” “Patient died due to lack of safety equipment by bedside (oxygen, suction, etc). The patient choked, desaturated while reconfiguring bays.” “We have had cardiac arrests in the corridor or in cubicles blocked by patients on trolleys in front of them, delaying lifesaving CPR. Despite these ‘never events’, we still are obliged to deliver care in the corridor.” “A patient had a cardiac arrest in the corridor by the male toilet and died”. Another nurse described “cardiac arrests in the corridor with no crash bell, crash trolley, oxygen, defibrillator…straddling a patient doing CPR while everyone watches on”. The Whittington Hospital asked for registered nurses who can work shifts in their corridors to offer care, when patients overflow from existing rooms. The RCN called for immediate Government action to end “corridor care”, which it says has become normalised and is not just occurring in the winter months. In a media briefing accompanying the report, one nurse, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “This is not nursing, this is firefighting.” A survey of NHS nursing staff for the study found 67 per cent said they are delivering care every day in overcrowded or unsuitable places. More than nine in 10 said care is unsafe. One nurse was emotional as she told the briefing there were 30 chairs in their emergency corridor but no extra staff for those patients. She said: “The risk of patients dying and not being noticed is very high, everybody is stretched.” She also told how staff experienced violence from patients due to long waiting times, adding the experience of working in the NHS “makes a hole in your soul”.Professor Nicola Ranger, RCN chief executive, described the report as “harrowing” and said staff were leaving because they “cannot do it any more”. She added: “This winter is absolutely no surprise to any of us. Wards, departments were escalated into areas they shouldn’t be all through June, July, August, Septembe
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