Corridor care crisis 'stripping our elderly of dignity'

A CORRIDOR care crisis is "eating away at the heart of the NHS" and stripping thousands of older people of their dignity, a report by a leading charity warns today.

- By Hanna Geissler Health Editor

Age UK lays bare the harrowing experiences of patients left languishing in corridors for hours.

Shocking cases include people being forced to use a bedpan there; having to lie on the floor because they are given only a chair; and dying before they can be moved to a ward.

A patient called Susan, 79, from South London, likened hospitals to "war films, with queues of stretchers and people suffering".

Pain

After suffering a heart attack, she was left on a couch in a curtained-off area near A&E for 13 hours, where she overheard conversations about two people dying nearby.

Susan was finally moved to a male ward in an intensive care unit at 1am.

She said: "They attach you to monitoring machines and a drip but ECGs involve pads being placed on your chest in view of patients opposite."

Eleven months later she had another heart attack and had to drive herself to hospital due to an ambulance strike. Susan was again placed on a couch.