A&E patients left in the dark and on broken beds for 24 hours – NHS corridor care laid bare in damning new report

A person died while waiting for 40 hours on a trolley in a hospital corridor, while diabetic patients were left for hours without food, a damning review into NHS corridor care has revealed.

Other sick patients were left on broken beds in pitch-black corridors for 24 hours with no privacy, according to a review of patient care in emergency departments in December by the group Healthwatch England.

They made up just some of the more than 2.3 million A&E visits, with about 400,000 people admitted to hospital, in December, when 19,000 resident doctors went on strike for five days, putting hospitals under even greater pressure than usual.

One in four people (137,763) in December waited for more than four hours between admission and staff finding them a bed, while one in ten (50,775) waited more than 12 hours. That’s almost 50,000 more patients than the NHS target for a maximum of 22 per cent of people waiting over four hours.

Among those who said they had waited on chairs, trolleys, or even the floor in non-clinical areas when no beds are available, was a patient from Essex with a chronic lung condition. They said they had a 24-hour wait in A&E for a bed on a ward, but were given a “broken bed in a pitch-black corridor”.

Another patient, in a wheelchair with osteoporosis, said they had “no buzzer” and discharged themselves at 5am following the “traumatising” experience.

An elderly patient, from Havering, told Healthwatch that the person next to them died while they were waiting for 40 hours on a trolley in a corridor, adding that they had “no dignity” and found it “very scary”.

Many patients told Healthwatch that the lack of privacy while waiting or being treated in corridors led them to feel as though they had been stripped of their dignity, especially patients who had issues going to the toilet.

Others said they struggled with catheter bags or needed to use bedpans in full view of other people. One person described how his wife had to clean him after he had wet himself while waiting.

“I was out of it [when] my wife found me 18 hrs after I arrived. I had wet myself due to [blood] sugar levels, in extreme pain, [and] didn’t know what was going on. My wife cleaned me with a screen around us in the corridor, gave me my meds, changed my clothes, she was furious as other staff were walking past all of the people in the corridor and did nothing to help,” the patient from Suffolk said.

Even patients admitted to hospital were cared for in corridors, with one chemotherapy patient from the Wirral, claiming they were left for days in a nurse’s equipment cupboard.

“[The hospital] put my life at risk by keeping me in a nurses’ equipment cupboard for three days with no bathroom. I was in chemo, fighting sepsis and they had me sharing a commode with the corridor care patients who were mostly elderly and full of infections.”

Healthwatch also heard from a younger person who was left in a cubicle for 30 hours without regular observations and medication.

Diabetic patients also told Healthwatch that they went more than 15 hours without food or drink. One person, from Enfield, said they waited 12 hours before getting a bed for a broken hip and between the hours of 4.30pm and 8am they were offered no food or drink.

NHS England has been approached for a comment.