Nurses have disclosed the dire circumstances they encounter daily within NHS settings, as patients are now spending their last moments on congested trolleys in hospital corridors.
The shocking revelations emerged from a briefing in central London where the Royal College of Nurses presented its explosive 460-page dossier detailing 'corridor care.' According to this comprehensive report, the phenomenon of delivering healthcare in unsuitable places has become a standard occurrence throughout the year and is currently at its most severe.
At the launch event held at the RCN's headquarters, one nurse, visibly distraught, shared her experience: "Two weeks ago I had an elderly patient who had been in the corridor for six hours, and then a doctor told me we believe she's ending, nearing the end of her life. She still remained in that corridor another two hours while we tried to find an appropriate bed space."
READ MORE: Prostate cancer drug breakthrough offers new hope for patients facing treatment resistance
She further recounted the profound impact on the family: "What was really emotional was the family couldn't thank me enough for getting that space organized, but she spent eight hours, nearing the end of her life in front of a patient who was detoxing from alcohol, vomiting and being really abusive, and another patient in front of them who was in a lot of pain and who was screaming and shouting."
The nurse also reflected on the lack of compassionate care provided, adding: "There was no dignified care at all and the family was thankful for the basic fix that we did do. If that was my mum, I would have been horrified. If that was your mom, how would that make you feel that they laid them on a crappy trolley in a crowded corridor while they died?"
Another nurse recounted the pressures of the job, saying: "You're so task focused it's hard to take a minute to stop, talk to your patient, see who's there. It's just next one in, next one in, and you go out, call their name, they don't answer. You do that three or four times or the next few hours so you put them down as a 'self discharge' because who the hell wants to sit in a waiting room for hours with people coughing and vomiting. Then it takes someone to realise there is someone under a pile of coats who has passed away", reports the Mirror.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) has said that its testimony from 5,000 nurses highlights the dire outcomes of years of NHS underinvestment. Numerous incidents were shared, such as a couple learning about their miscarriage care while standing in a busy corridor and a dementia patient with incontinence being attended to next to a snack machine.
Nurses expressed "ashamed" and "guilty" feelings about the level of care they could provide. Attacks, including being spat at and threats of violence, were also discussed.
A senior support worker in one of the South East’s major acute trusts commented yesterday: "You're going to have a defib thrown at you in the middle of a waiting room, you're going to have people scream at you saying 'you're the reason my mum died! ' You take these things home with you and it stays with you. It makes a hole in your soul."
The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has analysed that the annual rate of NHS funding increases, which is meant to keep up with the ageing population, has slowed from nearly 6% under New Labour to a mere 2% under the Conservatives. This is still below the average annual increase of around 4% since the NHS was established, which is considered low compared to European standards.
