Patients are dying in corridors and pregnant women are miscarrying in side rooms as overwhelmed hospitals struggle to cope, nurses say.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said evidence provided by more than 5,000 of its members across the UK this winter also showed cupboards, car parks, bathrooms and nursing stations were being turned into makeshift areas for patients.
Nurses warned such practices put patients at risk as staff were unable to access vital equipment such as oxygen, heart monitors and suction equipment, and did not have the time and space to provide CPR.
Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he agreed the problems should not be tolerated, but laid the blame on the previous government.
However, RCN general secretary Prof Nicola Ranger said the findings should act as a “wake-up call” to Labour.
“Patients are being stripped of their dignity and lives put at risk,” she said.
Embarrassed
Prof Ranger said increased investment was needed and “questions need to be asked” about whether this government had done enough to head off the winter pressures being seen.
Last week more than 20 NHS trusts declared critical incidents, as high levels of flu and the bad weather put huge pressure on hospitals.
But latest figures released on Thursday showed the number of patients in hospital with flu dropped from an average of just over 5,400 a day at the start of the year to below 5,000 last week on average, raising hope the peak may have passed.
Prof Ranger said corridor care, as it has become known, was becoming normalised across the UK and she warned that without action it would hamper the government’s key priority in England of reducing the waiting list for non-urgent care.The RCN published more than 400 pages of testimony from its members about the problems they had been seeing. (BBC)