‘Undignified and awful’: Patients dying in overcrowded UK hospital corridors, nurses warn

UK patients are dying in hospital corridors as a result of overcrowding, nurses from the National Health Service (NHS) warned in a new report calling for an end to so-called “corridor care”.

Funding shortfalls have squeezed the UK’s health service in recent years. But now, amid a winter surge in illnesses, NHS hospitals have been pushed to the brink, according to a survey from the Royal College of Nursing, a British nursing union.

Nurses described changing incontinent dementia patients near vending machines, treating people in shower rooms due to a lack of space, and being asked to go around to check if patients were still alive.

The nurses said the situation was “undignified and awful”; “degrading”; and “unsafe”; and that “we continue to fill up like a balloon waiting to explode”.

“It’s like being in a war zone,” one nurse wrote.

The survey – which included about 5,000 nurses and was conducted from mid-December to mid-January – indicates these kinds of problems are widespread.

About 2 in 3 nurses said they were treating patients in corridors, storage areas, waiting rooms, offices, carparks, and other “inappropriate” settings on a daily basis.

Around 91 per cent of them said patient safety and care were compromised as a result.

For example, they said there are times when no oxygen is available for people in decline, while overcrowded conditions create fire hazards.

Long waits to be seen by a doctor also run the risk of worsening people’s health conditions, they said.

“This devastating testimony from frontline nursing staff shows patients are coming to harm every day [and] forced to endure unsafe treatment,” Nicola Ranger, the nursing union’s chief executive, said in a statement.

“Vulnerable people are being stripped of their dignity and nursing staff are being denied access to vital lifesaving equipment”.

‘This must be a watershed moment’

Ranger called for transparency on how many patients are being cared for under these conditions and said investment is needed to shore up the NHS, including the nursing workforce.

Several nurses said they had left the NHS or were considering quitting as a result of the conditions.

Several doctors’ groups said their members have also been raising the alarm over unsafe patient conditions in hospitals.

“We must eliminate the unacceptable practice of corridor care,” Dr John Dean, clinical vice president of the Royal College of Physicians said, adding that the situation has gotten worse over time.

Meanwhile, Dr Adrian Boyle, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said “this must be a watershed moment, a line in the sand”.

Just one day before the nursing union released its report, UK Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting told the parliament that he “will never accept or tolerate patients being treated in corridors” but that the practice could continue in the coming year because “it will take time to undo the damage that has been done to our NHS”.

He pointed to chronic underinvestment and a lack of reform for the health service under the previous Conservative leadership, which was in power from 2010 to 2024.

“This is not the level of care staff want for their patients, and it is not the level of care this government will ever accept for patients,” Streeting said during the speech.