OPINION
Wes Streeting can’t keep blaming the Tories for NHS failings (Image: PA)
How did we go from having an that was the envy of the world to one which in 2025 can barely reach Third World standards? Actually scrap that – Third World standards are positively luxurious compared to what tens of thousands of Brits are facing every day in filthy, overcrowded A and E Departments. And because of that we’re having to face the Hellish fact that “corridor care” is now the norm in a majority of hospitals. In fact it’s become so normalised that hospitals are now advertising for doctors to work exclusively in corridors.
How can that be a civilised way to treat sick people? University Hospitals Sussex NHS Foundation Trust is currently advertising for a doctor to work in their A and E corridors – specifically to look after frail older people – at a salary of up to £70,000. And while your immediate reaction might be – “Thank God for those poor old people.” Our real reaction should be one of shock, horror and disgust that such a grotesque thing is actually happening.
Patients need proper care – which doesn’t involve treatment in a corridor (Image: Getty)
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Because what this means is that all hospitals are now accepting that this cruel and inhumane way of dealing with the sickest and most vulnerable is “ normal” health care in Britain today when it is in no way befitting a civilised society – especially not in a country that spends £180 plus billion pounds a year on its bloated NHS which is no longer fit for purpose.
Corridor care is a shocking indictment of our third rate health service. It’s beyond inhumane that people who are dying, people who have , women who are about to give birth, those who are vomiting or throwing up blood have to do all that in full public view and in unhygienic, unsanitary corridors?
No-one wants that kind of care for themselves and they sure as Hell don’t want it for the people they love. A recent report from the Royal College of physicians says patients are routinely being stripped of their dignity and worse – having their safety compromised.
These doctors said they’d seen “end of life” patients – that’s people who are dying – waiting for hours in the back of ambulances because there wasn’t even room in the packed out corridors.
What kind of way is that to exit this world – desperate, in pain and very likely alone. Animals get treated better for God’s sake.
One doctor said: “I’ve had more than one patient die as a direct result of them not being in an appropriate clinical area – meaning they were in a corridor or a toilet and THAT’S why they died.
I was going to say: “What next – car park care?” But that’s already happening. We now that desperately sick people are being treated in corridors, car parks, toilets, and in rooms usually reserved for families visiting dead relatives.
This isn’t medical care – its medical savagery. And no it’s not the fault of crazily overworked doctors and nurses that there’s no space and no hospital beds. It’s the fault of successive Governments who just keep passing the buck while spouting noble words about its all going to stop and change under them. But it never does.
And now our crumbling NHS is hiring doctors to work exclusively in bloody corridors. How can that be called health care? One doctor, maybe one nurse in a dirty corridor with 40-odd patients many of whom have been lying there for hours unattended. How the Hell is one doctor expected to deal with all that? He/She would have to be superhuman and on £700,000 a year not £70,00.
And why would anyone actually want that job – it’s not caring for people, it’s not curing them or even keeping them alive because no-one can be treated effectively in a corridor.
Why is it that in this country we only have 170 A and E facility hospitals when in France they have 650 and in Germany 1,200. One has to conclude those countries, those Governments care more about their people than ours does.
The ad for the Sussex Trust reads: “Caring for old people in corridors in the emergency department is now normal in our hospital and this is replicated in Trusts across the country.”
Well it damn well shouldn’t be. How can we call ourselves a civilised society when people are left dead in those corridors for hours while others are fighting for their lives and very often losing the fight. Where’s the dignity, where’s the compassion, where’s the caring?
Health Secretary has promised to end this aberration that is corridor care. But he’s not said how or when which means he has no plan to end it. He’s just spouting words to make it sound like he’s doing something when he isn’t.
And he’s needs to stop blaming the for what’s happening in the NHS right now on HIS watch. Because THAT’s just playing politics, blaming other people while sick people are dying. He needs to stop the dying, stop the indignity and give people what they need and what they’ve actually paid for – decent humane health care!