Patients are being asked to volunteer to sleep in corridors in order to free up spaces on overrun NHS wards, a new report reveals.
An anonymous survey of front-line doctors found staff are deliberately approaching the “least bad” patient in their ward to ask them to give up their bed.
The report on NHS performance in December and January by the Royal College of Physicians also reveals concerns that “panicking” managers desperate to get new patients into recently vacated beds are sidelining proper infection controls.
Patients groups said the document showed that quality hospital care has now become “a lottery” and that, despite a relatively mild winter, the NHS is “on course for catastrophe”.
Approximately 60,000 patients visited A&E a day in England in the last week of December, and early data indicates that a quarter had to wait for more than four hours to be seen, with many having to wait for up to 12 hours.
For full article see The Telegraph 28 February 2017