More NHS hospitals leaving patients in corridors to free up ambulances

More and more UK hospitals are leaving patients in corridors due to a lack of bed space. NHS bosses say so-called corridor care is freeing up ambulances and saving lives, but BBC Newsnight has spoken to patients who say the growing practice is humiliating and degrading.

Gregory Knowles counted 13 other patients alongside him on a corridor at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital (NNUH) in March. Complications after an operation put him back in hospital and on to a ward but at 04:00 one morning he was moved.

The 68-year-old was wheeled in his bed to reception. "I was waking up with people around me. It was horrendous," he told the BBC. "I had no screens and no facilities for water or for really getting changed. My possessions were on the bottom of the bed. My daughter and partner were as horrified as I was," he said.

His partner Alicia Goulty described how staff had been too rushed to attend to him. "One day when we got there his catheter had leaked in the bed when he was on the corridor. He was wet with no covers or any screens and I had to take him to the bathroom to get him cleaned". Ms Goulty said her partner's medication had been missed. "We had to ask for water for him. We had to ask sometimes for his meals because he got forgotten."

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Source: BBC News, 15 May 2024

You can read a nurse's first-hand account of a corridor care shift in this blog on the hub: A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift