JOhn, 42, arrived at the emergency department with chest pains on Monday afternoon and said he was "very angry" after spending about 24 hours in a hospital corridor in southwest England. "It's clear that the hospital is beyond capacity."
At the time of writing, he has been moved to another hospital in the area and is awaiting an angiogram on Wednesday. "It's cramped and cramped here and the patients have zero privacy," he messaged from his bed in the hospital corridor.
John was one of dozens of people who shared their experiences of emergency room corridors with the Guardian after a north London hospital posted an advert asking nurses to work 12-hour "corridor care" shifts.
“The original plan was for me to be admitted to the ward, but the ward was full,” John said.
“I have had one hot meal since arriving and last night I had a cheese sandwich and a packet of crisps for dinner. Not great for someone with a history of heart disease and definitely not suitable for what I was told I should of the mediterranean diet.
"It's clear that staffing levels are low, patient volumes are high and staff morale is low."
Michael, a civil servant, told the Guardian on Tuesday from a hospital in southeast England that his elderly mother spent about 17 hours in bed in the corridor. In her 80s, she suffered from chronic diseases and was later admitted to the ward. He said: "There are too many people to deal with and too little time. There is constant commotion, not to mention the indignities and struggles that come with this being a busy place.
"At one point, a group of people poured into the hallway where my mother was, and she couldn't believe what she was seeing. She said to me: 'It was horrific - it was absolute chaos.' "These are the realities patients face in the emergency department."
He said his main concern was for patients who were unaccompanied by relatives. “Staff are juggling so many different things that little things can slip off the agenda.”
In April last year, Jane went to the emergency room accompanied by her son, and said that after 15 hours in the corridor, she had to "pass out" before she could go back. "Older patients with dementia are in so much pain that patients with limited mobility have to use bedpans in busy corridors. It's just appalling."
The 53-year-old office manager from north-west England was taken to hospital after calling 999 after suffering severe pain in his lower back and being unable to move. She later discovered her herniated disc had pressed into a nerve. "The pain was worse than labor and all they could offer me was paracetamol. I asked for gas and air but they said there was no staff to monitor me.
"I was constantly passed and triaged by porters or other patients and their relatives, with my medical records on a torn piece of paper at the end of a trolley. I was ashamed, embarrassed and shocked at the state I was in."
After the MRI scan, she was treated with morphine and discharged once the pain was under control. She said she "ended up suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder" as a result of her experience and believed the main problem was a lack of management. "Patients suffered avoidable excruciating pain and significantly worsened their condition in a setting where they should have been helped," she said.
Healthcare professionals have also contacted the Guardian to find out about the situation in hospitals. Many felt corridor care had become standard practice and cited staff being spread too thinly. Others mentioned it was "mortifying" and "heartbreaking" to see people spending so long in corridors, and that something was clearly wrong with the system.
For Allen, 25, who works as a paramedic in East Anglia, corridor care is a "better option" than leaving patients in ambulances outside A&E. "This is often portrayed in the media as the worst possible outcome, but ambulance crews simply do not have the knowledge, training or equipment to be the correct paramedics for hours on end outside of hospital," he said.
He argued there was "no overall strategy" for how to deal with delays in hospitals, but corridor care was "better and safer" and freed up ambulances for those in the community who needed them. “You don’t want to go to the hospital during your shift because you know you’re going to be there for six to seven hours.
"It's far from ideal, but some (hospital) staff think leaving patients in ambulances is the 'easy option' because they think patients receive one-on-one care and constant monitoring. But they forget that they're at home The patients may be really unwell and need us to see them.”
Allen said delays in emergency rooms also affected patients' decisions about whether to be hospitalized. "Sometimes they don't want to wait and say: 'Why bother?' But that means they don't get the care or investigation they need. It's impossible to know what the wider implications are for people's health."
Paul, a medical consultant who has worked in the west of England, said corridors and assessment rooms being crowded with patients was nothing new. "It was chaos," he said. "I've been a doctor for over 30 years so I know it shouldn't be like this, but junior doctors don't realize how unusual it is for so many patients to be treated like this."
He recalled a case in which a young man with severe gastroenteritis and severe diarrhea was treated in an A&E chair for five days. "He went from a guy who was in pretty bad shape with a gut infection to a guy who was severely sleep-deprived, disheveled, a little crazy, exhausted. He eventually discharged himself from the hospital."
Paul, who no longer works for the NHS but still works in healthcare, said no one should have to go through what he saw. "It's not even the worst situation I've ever seen, but I feel like I'm complicit."
He said the problem won't be solved overnight, but some solutions include recruitment and infrastructure. "Some hospitals are simply not fit to cope with the volume of patients we are receiving and will need to be rebuilt. But just getting the funding takes years.
"You can't point the finger at anyone because everyone is trying to cope with a bad situation."
*All names have been changed.