'Corridor care' crisis leads to patients dying in toilets

Shocking report finds nurses and hospitals a at breaking point

- RACHEL CLUN KATE DEVLIN

Nurses are being forced to care for patients in corridors, store rooms, car parks and toilets as a shocking new report lays bare how the current hospital crisis is costing lives. Patients have been left dying in corridors as helpless medical staff have had no other place to put them, while some deaths have gone unnoticed for hours as staff struggle to manage overcrowded hospital wards during the winter flu surge.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) survey of more than 5,000 nurses across the UK found that nine in 10 (91.5 per cent) were delivering care in inappropriate settings such as corridors at least once a month, while nearly seven in 10 (66.8 per cent) were doing so in unsuitable places every day.

The stark picture emerged as health secretary Wes Streeting said patients had been “let down” by the continued normalisation of corridor care, as well as by ambulances taking hours to arrive – but could not promise that the problem would be solved by next winter.

He said: “I want to be clear: I will never accept or tolerate patients being treated in corridors. It is unsafe, undignified – a cruel consequence of 14 years of failure on the NHS – and I am determined to consign it to the history books.”

Mr Streeting revealed that there were 53,000 NHS staff off sick with flu in the first week of 2025, increasing the pressure on the health system. But he added: “I cannot and will not promise that there won’t be patients treated in corridors next year. It will take time to undo the damage that has been done to our NHS.”