'Patients in hospital corridors has become the new NHS normal - action is needed now'
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Patients languishing in hospital corridors should be the exception, but it is now the norm in today’s crumbling NHS. Seven in 10 nurses say they deliver care daily in the most unsuitable places – not just corridors but also in cupboards, car parks, shower rooms and even toilets. Conditions which would have made Florence Nightingale weep.
It puts lifesavers such as cardiac monitors and oxygen out of reach, makes CPR harder to carry out, increases the danger of infection and leads to worse clinical outcomes. Lives are undoubtedly being lost as exhausted medical staff are unable to even prioritise the priorities. No wonder so many are suffering burnout. We visited Epsom Hospital in Surrey which has devised a system to almost halve the average waiting time in ambulances.
While that enables paramedics to get out to 999 calls faster, it means patients are head to toe in A&E and repeatedly shunted into any space available as more ambulances unload. The NHS now faces an endless cycle of too many patients for too few beds, a circle hospitals cannot square without fundamental reform. Health Secretary Wes Streeting is struggling to undo 14 years of Tory NHS neglect. But we fear he is drawing his measure for success too narrowly.
Delivering 40,000 extra routine hospital appointments a week is welcome. But A&E departments also need urgent intensive care. And there is a worry that solving one problem will be at the expense of the other. That would be unacceptable. Action is needed now to hire extra emergency staff and speed up hospital discharges to make more beds available... before the A&E crisis becomes a full-blown catastrophe.
