Responding to a Press Association interview about the normalisation of corridor care with the Royal College of Emergency Medicine's President Dr Ian Higginson, RCN General Secretary and Chief Executive Professor Nicola Ranger, said:

“Doctors and nursing staff are clear that corridor care is unsafe, undignified and unacceptable. But what’s almost as shocking as the normalisation of this devastating collapse in care standards, is the lack of urgency in sorting it. It’s been over 18 months since nursing staff declared a national emergency over corridor care.

“The failure to get to grips with the issue means that patients are routinely coming to harm and even dying unnecessarily. That situation threatens to worsen further this winter as cold weather hits. It will mean care in non-clinical areas will spread further, as it already has, beyond emergency departments and to wards and other parts of the NHS estate. It is incredibly dangerous.

“Nursing staff want to see a fully funded action plan setting out eradication. This starts with real investment in beds, the nursing workforce in hospitals and the community, and crucially, long-overdue action to boost capacity in social care to improve discharge. Patients don’t have years to wait and every day corridor still exists is a policy failure with devastating human consequences.”

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