On the frontline of the UK’s corridor care crisis
Corridor care and temporary escalation spaces all sound innocuous as phrases. All of this wording is misleading – and perhaps deliberately – as this is what it really means.
Nursing staff trying to care for patients in corridors, storerooms, carparks, offices and even toilets. No access to safety critical facilities like oxygen, suction or monitoring equipment. Fire escapes blocked. Patients having diagnoses and discussions in public, and being treated, fed, washed and toileted – and sadly even dying – with no privacy. Staff across health and social care at breaking point as professionals and as people, knowing they cannot give patients and families the care and dignity they deserve.
Corridor care is the obvious and avoidable failure of political will to reform the NHS and social care, and invest in its workforce under recent governments. Nursing staff, as the largest part of the workforce, are bearing the brunt of this failure, but they are not alone.
