STV NewsA nurse of almost 40 years has said corridor care has become so normalised, that she has witnessed patients undergoing blood transfusions in hospital corridors.
June Ramsay has spoken out about the issues facing the NHS in Scotland, following the publication of a damning report detailing the extent of corridor care across the UK.
The Royal College of Nursing report, which surveyed NHS nursing staff across the UK, found nine in ten believe patient safety is being compromised.
Seven in ten said they are delivering care in overcrowded or unsuitable places – like corridors, offices, converted cupboards and even car parks – on a daily basis.
Having been a nurse for 38 years, June says the last year and a half has seen emergency departments over capacity, with ambulances queuing outside of hospitals full of patients unable to access treatment.
STV NewsSpeaking to STV News, she said: “I cant remember the last time in the last year and a half when there hasn’t been additional patients on trolleys in corridors. It’s normalised.
“It’s not corridor care, it’s corridor no-care. You can’t provide dignified, safe care in a corridor.”
She said emergency departments are moving patients onto wards and into day units as they simply cannot cope, forcing nurses in other areas to be overrun.
She added: “What I see is people really sick, people in pain, people starting to have blood transfusions in the middle of the corridor.
“It just goes against every ethos you have as a nurse not to have that patient in a nice comfortable bed in surroundings that allow me to care for them.”
June said she felt “disheartened” by comments made by the First Minister on Thursday, who apportioned blame to the current flu season and the ongoing impact of Covid.
While she said issues such as delayed discharges do have an impact on the number of beds available, she said overcrowding has been an issue in hospitals for months.
She added: “A year and a half is a long time to wait for you to have hope that this is going to be resolved.”
June recalls that at nursing college it was drilled into students that being a nurse was all about the patient, and she said treating people in corridors “goes against every moral as a nurse”.
She said: “It’s very draining, its very sapping, its difficult to have a conversation with relatives in difficult circumstances, its difficult to get a bond with your patient when you’re not nursing them the way you are trained to do and the way you really want to.”
June also says that the impact on patient care due to overcrowding is also impacting job retention and bringing in new faces, adding that nursing doesn’t appear to be an “attractive” profession to young people.
“I’ve seen a lot of nurses upset, crying, that they feel quite overwhelmed by it, and recently our retention figures haven’t been great.
“Staffing levels have got better and a real effort has been made with that, but its just good sums. If you’ve got nurses to look after 28 patients, and you’ve got 30 patients, it doesn’t really work.
“If it was correct and true (that more money than ever before is being ploughed into the NHS), would I be treating patients in a corridor? No.”
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