‘Nurses are at breaking point as they watch patients die in corridors’

Corridor care and temporary escalation spaces all sound innocuous as phrases, but they’re not. What it really means is nursing staff trying to care for patients in corridors, storerooms, carparks, offices and even toilets.  

What it really means is nursing staff having no access to safety-critical facilities like oxygen, suction or monitoring equipment.  

What it really means is fire escapes blocked and patients having diagnoses and discussions in public and being treated, fed, washed and toileted – and sadly even dying – with no privacy. 

Staff across health and social care are at breaking point as professionals and as people, knowing they cannot give patients and families the care and dignity they deserve.

Corridor care is the obvious and avoidable failure of political will to reform the NHS and social care and invest in its workforce under recent governments. Nursing staff, as the largest part of the workforce, are bearing the brunt of this failure, but they are not alone.

Most shocking is this situation is now being accepted as the norm. I remember in the recent past when a single 12-hour A&E breach would be rapidly dealt with. Today, I believe NHS leaders could not say how many patients are being looked after in unsafe conditions.

In our report, nursing staff have been clear in their message; that corridor care is widespread across the UK.

Nurses and patients alike deserve for the government and the NHS to be open and honest. Publishing regular data on the exact number of patients being cared for in these conditions is the minimum needed, not just to track progress but also to focus minds on the true state of the NHS and social care.

Ultimately, only investment in our nursing workforce will recover patient care, otherwise, the future of the NHS, already broken, becomes truly bleak.

This is a generational moment in time, a moment for bold government action on the NHS, built around a strong nursing workforce.

– Professor Nicola Ranger is the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary and chief executive