‘Absolute pandemonium’: stories of NHS England’s ‘corridor care’ NHS

COn, 42, said he was “very angry” after spending about 24 hours in a hospital corridor in southwest England, after arriving at the emergency department on Monday afternoon with chest pains. “It was very clear that the hospital was operating beyond capacity.”

At the time of writing, he had moved to another hospital in the area and was awaiting an angiogram on Wednesday. “It is cramped and crowded and there is no privacy for the patient,” he said in a message from his hospital bed in the corridor.

John is one of dozens of people who shared their experiences in A&E corridors with The Guardian, after a north London hospital ran adverts calling for nurses to take on 12-hour “corridor care” shifts.

“The plan was to admit me to one of the wards, but they are all full,” John said.

“Since arriving I have only had one hot meal, and yesterday I had a cheese sandwich and a packet of chips for dinner. Not great for someone with a history of heart problems and certainly not the Mediterranean diet I was told I should follow.

“Staffing levels are clearly low, patient numbers are high, and staff morale is very low.”

“Absolute chaos”

Michael, a civil servant, wrote to the Guardian from a hospital in southeast England on Tuesday that his elderly mother spent about 17 hours in a corridor bed. She was in her eighties and suffered from a chronic condition, and was later admitted to a ward. “There are too many people to deal with and too little time,” he said. There is constant hassle, not to mention the indignity and struggle of being such a crowded place.

“At one point, a group of people entered the corridor my mother was in and she couldn’t believe what she saw. She told me: ‘It was terrible, absolute pandemonium.’ These are the realities of accident and emergency patients.

He said his concern was primarily for patients who did not have relatives to wait with them. “Employees deal with so many different things that small things can slip off the agenda.”

“I felt ashamed, embarrassed and terrified”

Jane, who was accompanied by her son during her visit to A&E hospital last April, said she would have to “step out” to return after spending 15 hours in the corridor. “Elderly patients with dementia were feeling very distressed and patients unable to move were having to use bedpans in a crowded corridor. It was nothing short of horrific.”

The 53-year-old office manager from northwest England was taken to hospital after calling 999 due to severe pain in her lower back and her inability to move. She later found out she had a slipped disc pressing on a nerve. “The pain was worse than childbirth and they could only give me paracetamol. I asked for gas and air but they said there were no staff to monitor me.

“Porters or other patients and their relatives were constantly passing me and stopping me, and my medical notes were on a torn piece of paper at the end of my cart. I felt ashamed, embarrassed and horrified by the state I was in.”

After an MRI scan, she was given morphine and discharged from the hospital once her pain was under control. She said she “ended up developing PTSD” because of her experience, and believed the main problem was a lack of management. “Patients suffer severe, avoidable pain and their condition deteriorates dramatically in an environment in which they are supposed to be helped,” she said.

Healthcare professionals have also contacted The Guardian about the situation in hospitals. Many felt that hallway care had become standard practice and stated that staff numbers were spread too thin. Others stated that they felt “ashamed” and “sad” to see people in the hallways for long periods of time, and that something was clearly wrong with the system.

“It is a better alternative than keeping patients in ambulances.”

For 25-year-old Alan, who works as a paramedic in East Anglia, care in the corridors is a “better alternative” than keeping patients in ambulances outside the emergency department. “It is often portrayed as the worst possible outcome in the media, but ambulance staff simply do not have the knowledge, training or equipment to properly care for people for hours on end outside of hospital,” he said.

He felt there was no “comprehensive strategy” for how to manage delays in hospitals but care in the corridors was “better and safer” and made ambulances available to those who needed them in the community. “You’re having your shift and you don’t want to go to the hospital because you know you’re going to be there for six to seven hours.

“It’s far from ideal, but keeping patients in ambulances is seen by some as an ‘easy option’. [hospital] Staff also see that patients receive 1:1 care and constant monitoring. “But they forget the patients at home who may be in very poor health and need us to go to them.”

Allan said delays in accidents and emergencies also affected patients’ decisions about whether or not to admit them to hospital. “Sometimes they don’t want to wait and say: ‘Why bother?’ But that means they don’t get the care or investigations they need. It’s impossible to know the broader impact this is having on people’s health.

‘I felt complicit’

Halls and assessment rooms full of patients are not a new phenomenon, said Paul, a medical consultant who used to work in western England. “It’s pandemonium,” he said. “I’ve been in medicine for over 30 years, so I know this isn’t how it should be, but junior doctors don’t appreciate how strange it is to treat so many patients in this way.”

He referred to the case of a young man suffering from severe gastroenteritis and terrible diarrhea, who was treated in a chair in the emergency department for five days. “He went from a fairly sick guy with a gut infection to a severely sleep-deprived guy who was disheveled, a little crazy and completely exhausted. He was eventually released.”

Paul, who no longer works in the NHS but is still in healthcare, said no human being should have to go through what he saw. “It wasn’t even the worst case I’d seen but I felt complicit.”

He said the problem cannot be solved overnight but some solutions include employment and infrastructure. “Some hospitals are not fit for purpose to handle the numbers we receive and need to be rebuilt. But it takes years just to secure funding.

“You can’t point the finger at anyone in particular because everyone is doing their best in a bad situation.”

*All names have been changed.