Responding to the updated guidance on ‘Corridor Care’ by NHS England, RCN Chief Nursing Officer Lynn Woolsey, said:

 

“While providing corridor care guidance to NHS leaders and clinicians is important, it equally shows just how far the situation has deteriorated for patients and staff. Nursing staff sounded the alarm 18 months ago on the issue of corridor care, yet it’s deeply distressing and demoralising to see it ultimately accepted as an inevitability into next year and beyond. Patients and nursing staff deserve better.

 

“It’s right that this guidance now recognises the importance of trusts measuring corridor care not just in emergency departments but in all hospital wards, as called for by the RCN. However, the definition of what constitutes corridor care isn’t acceptable. Just because a space has been included in winter planning doesn’t mean it’s clinically safe. To nursing staff, guidance on excluding certain groups from the practice of corridor care will feel detached from the reality of working under intolerable pressures. It is also unambitious; as healthcare professionals, nursing staff consider corridor care unacceptable for everyone.

 

“Alongside guidance on dealing with the impact, 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; corridor care should’ve already been eradicated, and every day it still exists is a policy failure with devastating human consequences.”

 

Ends

 

Notes to editors

 

Earlier today, NHS England published its updated guidance on corridor care named ‘Principles for providing patient care in corridors’.