Emergency health care professionals are criticising new NHS guidance that facilitates patients being treated in hospital corridors.
The recent development has caused anxiety that the guidance is an attempt to normalise the danger that comes with caring for patients in corridors. However, doctors and other healthcare professionals remain adamant that this should only ever be considered as a last resort.
NHS England currently adopts the jargon term “temporary escalation spaces” to describe corridors used to treat patients, and has recently stated that multiple hospitals use them regularly, despite the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) reinforcing that it is not possible to give an adequate quality of care in cupboards and corridors. They confessed concerns that escalation spaces create long waiting times in emergency departments, whilst not paying regard to a patient’s confidentiality.
The new NHS guidance, however, suggests staff can deliver safe and effective care in escalation spaces, while simultaneously stating that corridor care is “not acceptable and should not be considered as standard”.
The RCEM further said the use of corridors to deliver medical care was “associated with measurable harm to patients,” given that sleep and sufficient rest are hard to come by in such circumstances. The association that sets standards of training and administers examinations for emergency medicine also claimed that infection control was greatly compromised and that corridor care presented too much of a strain on the staff who are left to care for patients in this manner.
“So-called ‘corridor care’ is a result of overcrowding, which leads to extended A&E stays that we know contribute to avoidable death. We and our members cannot, and will not, accept this situation. Rather than advising how to deal with overcrowding, all effort should be focused on preventing it.”
College president Dr Adrian Boyle and the vice-president Dr Ian Higginson also stated that it was “distressing for patients, particularly the old and the vulnerable, to be in open, noisy, brightly lit, often cold areas.”
“So-called ‘corridor care’ is a result of overcrowding, which leads to extended A&E stays that we know contribute to avoidable death. We and our members cannot, and will not, accept this situation. Rather than advising how to deal with overcrowding, all effort should be focused on preventing it.”
In June, it was further reported in the Metro that a terminally ill woman was forced to sleep on a hospital floor due to a lack of beds. The patient, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2022, was left with no alternative but to lie on the floor at Blackpool Victoria Hospital A&E, facing up to a 36-hour wait.
Source: Metro – Doctors fear for patients’ lives after hospitals accept corridor care.
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