16 January 2025
Responding to NHSE’s latest weekly winter ‘situation report’, which covers 6 – 12 January 2025, Dr Adrian Boyle, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said, “Hospitals are concerningly inching closer towards capacity as winter continues to grip the health system.
“The inability to discharge patients who are well enough to go home but can’t be due to the lack of appropriate social care is having a detrimental knock-on effect into our A&Es.
“It means Emergency Department clinicians can’t move their patients onto wards, causing so called ‘corridor care’ – vulnerable people, on trolleys, lining what is meant to be passageways, enduring dangerously long stays.
“And as so evidently detailed in The Royal College of Nurses harrowing report out today, it isn’t just corridors – storerooms, carparks and toilets.
“It’s beyond unacceptable. It’s shameful. And the ‘status quo’ must urgently change. Our patients deserve better. Our staff deserve better.
“Yesterday the Health Secretary acknowledged our calls to “tackle corridor care” and that the government is “determined to turn the situation around”. Our members and their colleagues are waiting to see this in action, with tangible, impactful plans to resuscitate urgent and emergency care.”
