NHS patients face intimate examinations in corridors and nights sleeping in chairs, warns union

Patients are being squeezed onto wards, forced to have intimate examinations in front of each other and left dying in hospital corridors as nurses are forced to play “trolley tetris”, NHS staff have revealed.

Testimonies from nurses, given to the Royal College of Nursing and seen by The Independent, reveal they are regularly forced into “unsafe” practices, such as squeezing more patients into wards with insufficient space and staffing.

The warnings come as the RCN has urged the next government to act on the “national emergency” with a survey of thousands of nurses revealing patients are being left without access to oxygen and put in undignified situations.

RCN deputy chief nurse Lynn Woolsey said in May: “We have increasing evidence from members up and down the country of patients being cared for in undesignated bed spaces, vending machines being moved out of A&E to make space for patients, two patients being put in one bed space, with one patient being asked to face the wall while a rectal exam was carried out on the other patient... shocking, shocking information and situations.”

In the face of the worsening A&E and ambulance waiting times last year, The Independent revealed hospital staff in many areas were ordered to move patients from emergency departments on, regardless of space.

In one example, a nurse said her trust ordered workers to accept patients from A&E at midday every day, adding: “Doesn’t matter what capacity A&E is or the ward. It’s just what has to be done. We have no space, no tables, no curtains.”

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Source: The Independent, 3 June 2024