Eight in 10 trusts caring for emergency department patients in corridors, finds BMJ investigation

(Press-News.org) Most (79%) of NHS trusts in England are treating patients in corridors or makeshift areas in emergency departments including “fit to sit” rooms, x-ray waiting areas, and in one case a café, finds an investigation published by The BMJ today.

Data obtained by The BMJ show that such practices have resulted in at least half a million patients being cared for in temporary spaces and that in some trusts one in four patients in accident and emergency (A&E) departments were cared for in corridors last year.

Corridor care refers to the practice of providing care to patients in hospital corridors or other non-designated areas, owing to overwhelming demand.

Senior doctors say this is having a catastrophic effect on patient care, with end-of-life conversations being held in corridors. One describes the situation as “heartbreaking” and “undignified.”

Freedom of Information (FOI) requests by The BMJ show the extent to which A&E corridor care is becoming normalised, with examples of trusts installing portable sinks on corridors, along with heating, lighting, plug sockets, and toileting facilities to provide long term care to patients in these settings.

Some organisations have even created dedicated “corridor nurses” for shifts, with one trust hiring extra staff to help oversee patients in the “temporary escalation chairs.”

Wes Streeting, the health and social care secretary, promised in October 2024 to “consign corridor care to history where it belongs” and the government recently pledged to publish national data on the situation “shortly,” although NHS England first committed to this back in January.

Ian Higginson, vice president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, says: “We hear of persistent stories of patients having cardiac arrests on corridors or of an inability to get resuscitation equipment to patients because everything’s in the way.”

He added: “For staff it’s a real source of moral injury. If this was happening in any other place, in any other walk of life, there would be an absolute outcry. It’s a complete scandal.”

Yet despite the obvious harm corridor care causes to patients and the staff who treat them, evidence shows that temporary caring spaces are becoming a permanent fixture in many hospitals.

For example, Dorset County Hospital said that it had adapted a corridor by adding portable sinks, heating, lighting and plug sockets. University Hospitals of Liverpool told The BMJ it had converted a room on a corridor into an additional toileting facility for patients, and Dartford and Gravesham said it had “dedicated nursing staff to care for patients on corridors.”

The three trusts reporting the highest number of patients in corridor care were Liverpool University Hospitals (37,735, or 18.7% of attendances), Barking, Havering and Redbridge in east London (35,224, 24% of all attendances) and Northern Care Alliance in Greater Manchester (33,987, 11.3% of attendances), although they all cover two or more emergency departments within one organisation.

Lynn Woolsey, chief nursing officer at the Royal College of Nursing, says: “These figures reveal the tragic reality of the frontline, where patients are left in unsafe and undignified conditions and nursing staff are prevented from providing person centred care. The figures are shocking, yet they are the tip of the iceberg. We know that corridor care is not limited to emergency departments.”

“As we head into winter, this situation is only set to worsen,” she adds.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “No one should receive care in a corridor in a chair or trolley - it is unacceptable and undignified. We are determined to end this, which is why we’re publishing corridor waiting figures so we can take the steps needed to eradicate it from our health service.”

 

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