Doctors and nurses in Wales have joined forces to call for an end to the use of ‘corridor care’, following demonstrations outside the Senedd today.

Dozens of BMA and RCN (Royal College of Nursing) members gathered before the home of the Welsh Government in Cardiff demanding action to end the dangerous and undignified practice of so-called ‘corridor care’ in Wales’s NHS.

The demonstration was held as Senedd members debated the terms of a petition brought by the association and RCN, which calls for immediate steps to be taken to address the increasingly normalised spectacle of patients having to be cared for in corridors and other inappropriate locations.

A result of understaffing and service pressures on the wider health service, the phenomenon of corridor care sees patients being placed in unsuitable areas of hospitals, often for many hours, while they either receive treatment or await further care.

Having garnered more than 10,000 signatures, the petition calls for stringent recording and reporting of corridor care and to make the treatment of patients who are seated in chairs for more than 24 hours to be categorised as ‘never events’.

The petition also calls for an immediate halt in the reduction of hospital bed numbers and for the Welsh government to deliver a national review and costed workforce plan to ensure the health service can meet future demand.

Among those present at today’s demonstration outside the Senedd was BMA Welsh consultants committee chair Manish Adke.

Describing corridor care as dangerous and unacceptable to patients and healthcare staff, Dr Adke said continued inaction by the Welsh Government would continue to put lives at risk.

He said: ‘As health professionals it is extremely distressing to see patients in unsafe, inappropriate spaces whilst they are at their most vulnerable.  

‘What’s worse is that this practice is becoming systematically normalised and that is completely unacceptable. It is not what we trained for, it’s not the care we want to give and it’s putting patients at risk of serious harm.

‘Without an allocated bed space we cannot stabilise patients with fluids, antibiotics or invasive lines. This adds serious risk to patients and leads to poorer outcomes and adds a greater risk of death.

‘The Welsh Government must act now because lives depend on it.’ 

‘Cold and undignified’

Healthcare professionals in Wales have spoken out about the conditions being imposed upon them and their patients, with many accounts making for harrowing reading.

One doctor explained: ‘I was the on-call medical consultant over the weekend. [I] reviewed frail, elderly patients sitting on chairs in the corridor, makeshift waiting rooms and ambulance. There was an octogenarian with cerebral bleed, a confused woman with advanced dementia. This is unsafe clinical practice and unacceptable.’

‘I had a patient with hip fracture waiting on ambulance corridor more than 16 hours,’ another doctor told the BMA. 

‘It was cold, undignified and she used nappies because due to pain she could not go to the toilet. She was on my trauma list, and it was heartbreaking to witness it.’

Commonplace neglect

Speaking to the BMA, emergency care consultant Ryan Hobbs said ‘boarding’ patients in corridors and other non-clinical areas had become so prevalent that many hospitals had begun factoring the use of these spaces into their daily operational capacity. 

He said: ‘The use of corridor space as boarding areas has become normalised within emergency departments. When staff report that the department is full, the presence of three designated boarding spaces is routinely cited as additional capacity, rather than an exception. 

‘Patients occupying corridor boarding spaces are often alone, without the support of family members. This situation is especially concerning for elderly patients, who are made even more vulnerable as they are kept for long periods in areas which, by necessity, are open-access and often have high volumes of traffic passing through them.’

He added: ‘Staff endeavour to provide the best care possible but these suboptimal environments make “basic” care – help with toileting, bathing and feeding – difficult.

‘Staff are also exposed to physical risks when attending to patients in inappropriate spaces [and]
the moral injury to staff, particularly junior nurses working long shifts in suboptimal conditions, is also considerable.’

The joint petition lists a number of recommendations aimed at eliminating the need for corridor care including restoring funding for primary care services in Wales in order to boost the recruitment and training of GPs and increasing the numbers of district nurses to 2010 levels.

It also calls for the Welsh government to adopt a preventative and early interventionist approach to healthcare with a strong focus on population and public health as a means of reducing acute service demands on the heath system.

Find out more about the petition or watch the Senedd debate

(Images by Natasha Hirst)