Patients stuck in overwhelmed NHS corridors are now being given airline-style care packages with eye masks and earplugs to help them cope with chaotic hospital admissions.
One endometriosis patient, who was left on a bed for two days, was given a brown paper care bag with a host of items including a comb and toothbrush, as well as stickers labelled ‘do not disturb’ and ‘wake me up for food’.
Sarah, 42, said the pack, given by the Countess of Chester Hospital, came with a letter apologising for a lack of beds in the hospital.
She was given the bag after arriving via ambulance for pain caused by the agonising reproductive condition — which causes womb-like tissue to grow in other parts of the body.
‘I got given a bottle of water, an eye mask because obviously they can’t turn the corridor lights off, ear-plugs to block out the noise, a little toothbrush, a little comb and hygiene products, and I just thought… is this how it is now?,’ she told LBC.
Patients being left on trolleys, chairs or temporary beds in corridors has become an increasing problem in the NHS, as the health service runs out of beds on hospital wards.
Sarah, who was left in an A&E corridor for two days in March before self-discharging, said her experience had been devoid of privacy and dignity.
‘You could hear people screaming, shouting, fights happening in A&E, in the reception, police coming past, and then you’ve got complete strangers just staring because where else are they meant to look?’ she said.
Patients stuck in overwhelmed NHS corridors are now being given airline-style care packages with eye masks and earplugs to distract from their extreme waits
Sarah, 42, said she was given the pack after she arrived at the Countess of Chester Hospital via ambulance for pain she was suffering from endometriosis. She ended up being put in a corridor for two days
A Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said: ‘Our staff are working hard through unprecedented demand for A&E services to see and treat patients quickly based on the urgency of their needs
‘You’ve got no privacy whatsoever. Your dignity is totally gone.
‘I was being sick…and there’s a lady behind me with dementia and her poor daughter was just completely…you know, didn’t even know what to do.’
A Countess of Chester Hospital NHS Foundation Trust spokesperson said of the LBC investigation: ‘Our staff are working hard through unprecedented demand for A&E services to see and treat patients quickly based on the urgency of their needs.
‘Regrettably, this means some people will have a long wait in a busy environment, which is not the experience they have a right to expect, and for this we are wholeheartedly sorry.
Responding to Sarah’s experience, Health Minister Karin Smyth said it is ‘unacceptable’ that corridor care had become routine in the NHS.
‘We want to see the end of that. Its not fair to patients, it’s not fair to staff, coming in to see those wards,’ she said.
Giving patients vanity packages risks ‘normalising’ this type of care, she added.
Sarah’s experience follows a damming report from the Royal College of Physicians which found four in five hospital medics had been forced to treat patients in ‘unsuitable’ public spaces.
One doctor said a patient had died due to being positioned too far away from life-saving equipment.
They had also seen ‘end-of-life patients waiting for hours in the back of ambulances or in emergency departments, feeling like they are a burden’.
Corridor care has now become so routine in parts of the NHS that some hospitals are now recruiting dedicated ‘corridor medics’ to staff these areas.
Other harrowing tales, of patients being forced to urinate into bottles in corridors or waiting in chairs for 55 hours for care, have also emerged in recent months.
The latest NHS England data show almost 47,000 patients were forced to wait longer than 12 hours for emergency care in A&Es last month.
Also called ‘trolley waits’ these represent the time between a medic deciding a patient needs to be admitted and when they are given a bed.
But critics claim this underestimates the true scale of the problem as it doesn’t tally the total time a patient spends waiting in A&E from the point when they arrive.
Bed-blockers — patients well enough to leave hospital but unable to get care at home— are one of the driving factors behind corridor care.
Also called delayed discharges these patients —through no fault of their own — take up an NHS bed leaving fewer for incoming patients to be transferred to.
This article was originally published by a www.dailymail.co.uk . Read the Original article here. .