Patient care in hospital corridors is 'now normal'

BBC reporters are at Queens hospital in Romford, east London, and, like many across the capital it is busy. Really busy.

When filming, 17 patients from their A&E were being treated on beds in corridors.

Growing numbers of attendances have meant that what was once an emergency measure has now become the norm.

Ruth Green is the director of nursing for the emergency department and says corridor care has become "customary practice"

When the BBC last filmed the corridor treatments here back in January 2023, the department was seeing 1,400 patients arrive each month by ambulance. Now that number has risen to 2,100.

The number of ambulances arriving every day has gone up in a year too, from around 90 per day to around 120.

Ruth Green, the director of nursing for the emergency department said: "Unfortunately it is now customary practice to have patients treated on our corridors pretty much all of the time, not every day now it’s the summer, but still far too often."

They have had to install new plugs in the corridors so they can operate the hospital beds, new nurse call buttons and a new sink.

One patient in a bed in the corridor is Louis Vella.

He spent 18 hours in A&E after coming in with chest pains and was eventually transferred to a corridor to wait for a bed on a ward.

He said: "It’s not ideal, no, but they are working as best they can with what they’ve got and what else can one ask for?"

Read full story

Source: BBC News, 19 July 2024

Related reading on the hub:

A silent safety scandal: A nurse’s first-hand account of a corridor nursing shift

Reflections on a clinical shift: "After 20 years of nursing, this is one of the worst shifts I have ever completed"