Nurses say patients are dying in hospital corridors.

Nurses say patients are dying in corridors and pregnant women are having abortions in side rooms as overwhelmed hospitals struggle to cope.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said evidence provided by more than 5,000 of its members across the UK this winter also showed that cupboards, car parks, bathrooms and nursing stations were used as temporary places for patients. being changed to

Nurses warned that such practices put patients at risk because staff were unable to access critical equipment such as oxygen, heart monitors and suction devices, and had less time and money to administer CPR. There was no place.

Health Secretary Wes Streeting said he agreed the problems should not be tolerated, but put the blame on the former government.

However, RCN general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger said the results should serve as a “wake-up call” for Labour.

“Patients are being robbed of their dignity and lives are at risk,” he said.

Prof Ranger said there was a need for increased investment and “questions need to be asked” about whether the government had done enough to ease the pressures of winter.

More than 20 NHS trusts announced serious incidents last week, as high levels of flu and bad weather put more pressure on hospitals.

Professor Ranger said corridor care, as it is known, was becoming the norm across the UK and warned that without action it would reduce waiting lists for non-urgent care in England. will affect the main priority of the government.

The RCN published more than that. 400 pages of testimony Ask its members about the problems they are seeing.

These include:

• People in cardiac arrest in corridors or cubicles that patients hold on trolleys delay life-saving CPR.
• Others die on trolleys and chairs in waiting rooms with a nurse saying the NHS is no “better” than the developing world.
• Abortion of women in side rooms, which nurses said was not only painful for patients, but also made it difficult to monitor the condition.
• An unruly, frail patient with dementia has to change with a vending machine in the corridor
• Cases where 20 to 30 patients were left in corridors under the supervision of a nurse and healthcare assistant.
• Elderly patients were left to spend days sitting in chairs and hours on beds in corridors in dirty clothes.

“Now we have corridor maintenance permanently,” said a nurse. “Patients don’t get the respect and care they deserve. It breaks my heart, to be honest.”

Another nurse, who used to work in critical care but was redeployed to A&E, said: “I felt embarrassed to work for the NHS and, for the first time, I could see that it was broken. has gone

“I never thought in my 30-year career that this would become the ‘normal’ but it is.”

An RCN member from the south-east of England said she was now working on the corridors almost every shift and had seen some particularly “horrendous” cases recently.

He described how a dying patient in his 90s, who had dementia and respiratory problems, was kept in a corridor for eight hours and staff were unable to provide him with adequate end-of-life care.

“The patient behind him was detoxing – he was vomiting and extremely abusive. It’s just not respectful. You take your dog to the vet and they’ll take better care.

“We’re not taking care of patients the way we want to.”

In a statement to the House of Commons on Wednesday about the pressures seen this winter, Streeting blamed the previous government.

“I want to be clear, I will never accept or tolerate patients being treated in corridors.

“This is the cruel result of 14 years of failing the unsafe, disrespectful, failing NHS and I am determined to consign it to the history books.

“I cannot and will not promise that patients will not be treated in the corridors next year, the damage to our NHS will take time to reverse.

“But that’s what this government wants.”

Duncan Burton, chief nursing officer at NHS England, said “increasing demand” had put severe pressure on health services in recent months, and described this winter as “the toughest the NHS has ever experienced”. .

“The impact this has on patient and staff experiences, as highlighted in the RCN report, should never be considered the standard to which the NHS aspires.”

Chris McCann, of patient watchdog Healthwatch England, said: “These devastating stories shared by nurses echo the experiences people tell us about.

“Patients say they are witnessing stressed and overstretched staff trying to brave these extreme pressures.”