‘The system is broken’ - damning report reveals NHS patients 'dying in corridors and going undiscovered for hours'
16 January 2025, 02:07
Patients are lying in their faeces, being treated in cloakrooms and bathrooms, and dying in corridors without anyone noticing according to a new ‘harrowing’ report into the NHS.
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The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) published new findings into what is going on in England's hospitals as staff try to manage the number of people needing care.
The 'harrowing' report tells of patients sitting for days in chairs - so-called 'chair care' - due to a lack of beds, patients piling up in corridors, delays to treatment and the elderly unable to get help due to a lack of resources and staff.
The RCN called for immediate Government action to end "corridor care", which it says has become normalised and is not just occurring in the winter months.
The experiences of more than 5,000 nursing staff across the UK, with more than 4,000 from England, contained within the 460-page report highlight how patients are "routinely coming to harm" and deaths are happening.
Testimonies from nurses in the report include:
- Patients regularly treated in bathrooms, cloakrooms, bereavement rooms and even viewing rooms (where families visit dead relatives), as pregnant women have miscarriages in side rooms.
- Patients are dying on trollies and chairs in corridors and waiting rooms, as well as in the back of ambulances, sometimes without being discovered for hours, as "all the fundamentals of care have broken down."
- Not enough space to toilet patients, leaving many "laying in their own urine/faeces" for hours.
- Regularly having more than 25 people waiting in corridors with 'no privacy or dignity', and having to send nurses around just to make sure people are still alive
- Patients being told they are dying in busy corridors where people are being treated and orders shouted across the unit
Nurses described the state of the NHS as 'no different than a third-world country', and many described it as 'tiring, exhausting and soul-destroying'.
One nurse, who wished to remain anonymous, said: "This is not nursing, this is firefighting."
A survey of NHS nursing staff for the study found 67% said they are delivering care every day in overcrowded or unsuitable places. More than nine in 10 said care is unsafe.
One nurse was emotional as she told a news briefing there were 30 chairs in their emergency corridor but no extra staff for those patients.
She said: "The risk of patients dying and not being noticed is very high, everybody is stretched...."
She also told how staff experienced violence from patients due to long waiting times, adding the experience of working in the NHS "makes a hole in your soul".
Professor Nicola Ranger, RCN chief executive, told the briefing the report was "harrowing", adding staff were leaving because they "cannot do it any more".
She added: "This winter is absolutely no surprise to any of us.
"Wards, departments were escalated into areas they shouldn't be all through June, July, August, September - it's become normal to put patients in all sorts of areas that I can promise you, being a chief nurse for nearly 10 years before this job, prior to Covid, would have been seen as abhorrent and totally unacceptable.
"That's the real tragedy here, is that care that would have been seen prior to Covid as shocking has been normalised."
She said the NHS did not have enough beds or nurses to meet demand and that was occurring throughout the year, adding: "I really want to make sure that flu is not used as the excuse for this."
This winter has been 'worse than the height of Covid', says A&E nurse
Regarding "chair care", Prof Ranger said: "We talk about 'fit to sit' as the new mantra."
Turning to the Government, she said there was a need for ministers to acknowledge the "scale of the problem", adding that all of this could have been predicted.
Health Foundation assistant director of policy Tim Gardner said: "Delays in A&E and resorting to corridor care is not a safe way to run a health service, putting patients at risk of avoidable harm and, as these testimonies highlight, taking a major toll on NHS staff.
He said that trolley wait times in A&E hit record highs in 2024, and that "Such delays were a rarity before the pandemic but are now the worst we have seen since records began."
He added: "This is a symptom of an NHS worn down by the pandemic and the decade of underinvestment that preceded it."
Shadow health secretary Ed Argar said it was "down to Wes Streeting to act now" to increase capacity in hospitals.
He said: "The Government talks about future reforms, but has little to say on what it will actually do to help patients now.
"It's down to Wes Streeting to act now to provide further support and increased capacity to our hospitals this winter, as Conservatives did, and as we've called on him to do."
Liberal Democrat health spokeswoman Helen Morgan said: "This report is harrowing. To think that patients are receiving desperately needed care in car parks and dying patients are being left to fend for themselves in corridors should make us sick to our stomachs.
