‘Risk of patients dying ... is very high’: corridor care crisis spans UK, survey finds
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Nurses are at breaking point around the UK as a survey shows nearly seven in 10 have to provide care in overcrowded hospital corridors on a daily basis. Nurses are being forced to care for patients in corridors, store rooms, car parks and toilets as a shocking new report lays bare how the current hospital crisis is costing lives.
![[Nicola Ranger said she had ‘no doubt at all’ that lives were being lost because of the crisis in hospitals]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/15/12/Nicola-Ranger---corridior-care.jpg)
Patients have been left dying in corridors as helpless medical staff have had no other place to put them, while some deaths have gone unnoticed for hours as staff struggle to manage overcrowded hospital wards during the winter flu surge. The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) survey of more than 5,000 nurses from around the UK found nine in 10 (91.5 per cent) had delivered care in inappropriate settings such as corridors at least once a month, while nearly seven in 10 (66.8 per cent) were delivering care in unsuitable places every day.
![[Nurses said they were looking for other jobs because they felt they could not provide adequate care]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/08/16/blackburn-hospital-2-copy.jpg)
The stark picture emerged as health secretary Wes Streeting said patients had been “let down” by the continued normalisation of corridor care and by ambulances taking hours to arrive – but could not promise there would be no treatment taking place in corridors next winter.
He said: “I want to be clear, I will never accept or tolerate patients being treated in corridors. It is unsafe, undignified, a cruel consequence of 14 years of failure on the NHS and I am determined to consign it to the history books.”. Mr Streeting revealed there were 53,000 NHS staff off sick in the first week of 2025 with flu, adding pressure to the health system.
