The Guardian reports that hospitals are having to redeploy nurses from wards to look after queues of patients in corridors and how this has raised public safety concerns.
Nurses, doctors and hospital bosses have all voiced unease about the practice, which has risen sharply in recent weeks as the NHS has struggled to cope with the extra pressures of winter.
The overcrowding in many hospitals has resulted in many corridors being lines with patients waiting for beds. No hospitals are having to ask specialist nurse to spend part of their shift working as “corridor nurses” to look after patients who are waiting for a bed.
The reported rise in corridor nurses comes days after the NHS in England posted its worst-ever performance figures against the four-hour target for A&E care. They showed that last month almost 100,000 patients waited at least four hours and sometimes up to 12 or more on a trolley while hospital staff found them a bed on the ward appropriate for their condition.
Full story in The Guardian, 13 January 2020