John, 42, said he was “quite angry” after spending about 24 hours in a hospital corridor in south-west England after arriving at A&E with chest pains on Monday afternoon. “It was very clear that the hospital was operating beyond capacity.”
At the time of writing, he had been moved to another area hospital and was awaiting an angiogram on Wednesday. From his hospital bed in the hallway, he said: “It is narrow, cramped and there is no privacy for the patient.”
John is one of dozens of people who shared their experiences of A&E corridors with the Guardian after a north London hospital took out adverts calling for nurses to take on 12-hour ‘corridor care’ shifts.
“The plan was to put me in a ward, but they’re all full,” John said.
“I have had one hot meal since arriving 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 for the Mediterranean diet I was told I should follow.
“It is clear that staffing levels are low, patient numbers are high and staff morale is dramatic.”
‘Absolute pandemonium’
Michael, a civil servant, said in a message to the Guardian on Tuesday from a hospital in southeast England that his elderly mother spent about 17 hours in a hallway bed. When she was in her eighties and suffering from a chronic condition, she was later admitted to a ward. He said: “There are just too many people to deal with and not enough time. There is constant unrest, not to mention outrage and strife because it is a busy place.
“At one point a stream of people came into the hallway where my mother was and she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She said to me: ‘It was terrible, absolute pandemonium.’ These are the realities of the emergency room that patients are exposed to.”
He said his concern was especially for patients who did not have family members who could wait with them. “Staff are busy with so many different things that small things can slip off the agenda.”
‘I was ashamed, embarrassed and shocked’
Jane, who was accompanied by her son during her emergency room visit last April, said she would have to be “knocked out” to go back after spending 15 hours in a hallway. “Older patients with dementia were very distressed and immobile patients had to use bedpans in a busy corridor. It was absolutely terrible.”
The 53-year-old office worker from north-west England was taken to hospital after calling 999 due to severe pain in her lower back and being unable to move. She later discovered that she had a hernia that was pressing on a nerve. “The pain was worse than during childbirth and they could only offer me paracetamol. I asked for gas and air, but they said there was no staff to keep an eye on me.
“I was constantly being passed and diverted by porters or other patients and their relatives, and my medical notes were on a torn piece of paper at the end of my trolley. I was ashamed, ashamed and appalled at the condition I was in.”
After an MRI scan, she was given morphine and was able to discharge herself as soon as the pain became manageable. She said she “ended up with PTSD from her experience” and believed the main problem was a lack of management. “Patients suffer avoidable extreme pain and deteriorate significantly in an environment where they are supposed to be helped,” she said.
Healthcare professionals also contacted The Guardian about the situation in hospitals. Many felt that ward care had become standard practice and indicated that staff was simply spread too thin. Others said they felt “embarrassed” and “heartbroken” when they saw people standing in the hallway for long periods of time and that there was clearly something 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, ward care is a “better alternative” to keeping patients in ambulances outside the emergency department. He said: “It is often portrayed in the media as the worst possible outcome, but ambulance staff simply do not have the knowledge, training or equipment to properly care for people for hours outside a hospital.”
He believed there was “no overarching strategy” for dealing with hospital delays, but that care on the unit was “better and safer” and ambulances were freed up for those who needed them in the community. “You spend your shift not wanting to go to the hospital because you know you will be there for six to seven hours.
“It is far from ideal, but keeping patients in ambulances is seen as an ‘easy option’ by some (hospital) staff, who believe that patients receive individual care and constant monitoring. But they forget about the patients in their own homes, who may be very sick and who need us to go to them.”
Alan said delays in A&E were also affecting patients’ decisions about whether to go to hospital. “Sometimes they don’t want to wait and say, ‘Why bother?’ But that means they don’t get the care or tests they need. It is impossible to know what wider effect this will have on people’s health.”
‘I felt complicit’
Paul, a medical consultant who used to work in the west of England, said corridors and examination rooms full of patients were not a new phenomenon. “It’s a madhouse,” he said. “I have been working in medicine for more than 30 years, so I know this is not how it should be, but doctors in training do not realize how abnormal it is to have such a large number of patients treated in this way.”
He recalled a case in which a young man with severe gastroenteritis and terrible diarrhea was treated in a chair in the emergency room for five days. “He transformed from a rather sick man with an intestinal infection to a severely sleep-deprived man who was unkempt, a bit crazy and completely exhausted. In the end he fired himself.”
Paul, who is no longer in the NHS but still works in healthcare, said no human being should have to experience what he saw. “It wasn’t even the worst case I’d ever seen, but I felt complicit.”
He said the problem cannot be solved overnight, but some of the solutions also include recruitment and infrastructure. “Some hospitals are simply not fit for purpose to cope with the numbers we are getting and need to be rebuilt. But it will take years before the financing is secured.
“You can’t point the finger at anyone in particular, everyone is just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”
*All names have been changed.