27 March 2024
Responding to Healthcare Improvement Scotland’s NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Review published today (27 March 2025), Dr Adrian Boyle, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine said: “It is not RCEM’s role to comment on the individual Health Board this report focuses on, the recommendations specific to that Board, or the issues which led to it being commissioned. But we thank the authors and all who contributed for such a thorough examination and assessment.
“What this in-depth review does clearly evidence is the systemic problems in Urgent and Emergency Care across Scotland – and the rest of the UK – including the endemic and pervasive issues of so-called ‘corridor care’, ambulance ‘stacking’, and the associated patient harm.
“RCEM strongly supports the national recommendations – particularly the development of a national standard approach to improving the quality and safety of urgent and unscheduled care in NHS Scotland, and improvement in the process by which staff can raise concerns and have faith that they will be addressed and action taken.
“Emergency Departments are where the issues present across the wider healthcare system become most visible. But the problems which manifest there are often not caused by, or can be solved in, the department itself.
“There has to be a whole-system approach to risk and patient care as this review suggests and we very much welcome strategies to abolish corridor care, ambulance stacking and use of non-clinical areas within Emergency Departments.”
“We look forward to working with the Scottish Government and other partners to implement the review’s national recommendations so that the cross-Scotland UEC crisis can be ended, staff are able to work in an effective and functioning system, and patients receive the standard of care they need and deserve.”
