THE scale of “undignified” corridor care in hospitals has been exposed after the National Health Service published official figures for the first time yesterday, Thursday.

The Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, which runs St Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, reported 89 patients being treated in corridors of its emergency departments on a single day in May.

NHS sources say the true figures are likely to be far higher than are being reported across the country as the use of the measures have become routine. Some trusts have hired nursing staff just to work corridor care shifts.

Corridor care is defined as patients spending more than 45 minutes being treated in makeshift areas, including corridors, side-rooms, and even car parks.

St Mary’s is just one example of many hospitals that are packed to capacity and resorting to the measures due to a shortage of beds and staff. Nationally there were, on average, more than 3,000 patients every day being treated in this way. Government ministers are under pressure to take meaningful action after years of campaigning by the Royal College of Nursing.

The union’s general secretary and chief executive Professor Nicola Ranger said: “The publication of today’s figures is testament to the dedicated campaigning of nursing staff, but the figures themselves are alarming.

“They show that this unsafe and undignified practice is rife throughout our hospitals and not just limited to emergency departments.

“That as many as 3,000 people a day were cared for in corridors during a spring month is such a damning indictment of how far care standards have fallen that words almost fail.”

She added: “The RCN declared a national emergency on this issue over two years ago. Patients deserve better than the slow action that has followed from government and health leaders.”

Last year Extra reported on the Royal College of Nursing launching a campaign calling on the government to bring an end to corridor care in National Health Service hospitals.
It said that patients were being “left feeling exposed, vulnerable and violated” and that staff felt “stressed, powerless and ready to leave the profession”.

One nurse, not connected to St Mary’s, had said: “I had to change an incontinent, frail patient with dementia on the corridor, by the vending machine. It was undignified… [and] felt so bad at the same time it was my duty to deliver care.”

Meanwhile images were released this week showing the latest designs for the proposed rebuild of St Mary’s after part of the site was forced to close over safety concerns.

The hospital in Paddington shut part of its outpatient building last year following the discovery of autoclaved aerated concrete, or RAAC, which is prone to collapse.

The Imperial trust plans show a new 800-bed major trauma and general hospital on the site.

Under these plans the hospital will be combined into a single and taller 30-storey building on a smaller footprint. It could be rebuilt by 2035.

The project is to be funded by the government’s delayed New Hospital Programme, which originally promised to rebuild 40 hospitals in England by 2030.