Patients are dying in the corridors of Britain’s hospitals. Pregnant women are receiving miscarriage treatments in semipublic places. Incontinent patients are cleaned next to vending machines.
Those are just some of the shocking revelations in a report published on Thursday by the Royal College of Nursing, a British nursing union. In the report, nurses described an overcrowding crisis that they said has led to a collapse in care, confidentiality and dignity across the country’s National Health Service.
“Vulnerable people are being stripped of their dignity and nursing staff are being denied access to vital lifesaving equipment,” Nicola Ranger, the general secretary and chief executive of the union, said in a statement.
The nation’s health care staff had reached a “breaking point,” she added in the report.
The 460-page report, which features anonymized testimony from more than 5,400 nurses surveyed from Dec. 18, 2024 to Jan. 11, is the latest mayday from British medical professionals. The union granted its members anonymity in order to speak freely, preventing repercussions from employers and protecting patient confidentiality, a spokesman said.
Doctors and nurses have struggled to care for the nearly 70 million people in the United Kingdom after years of challenges, including chronic underinvestment in the N.H.S. under Conservative-led governments that held power from 2010 to 2024.
“This must be a watershed moment, a line in the sand,” Dr. Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said in a statement.
Dr. Boyle was one of several leading British physicians to express solidarity with the nurses. He called the testimonies “harrowing.”
“The toll it is taking on staff is clear,” he added. “People in tears, frustrated, angry and in some cases even giving up their careers because they cannot face going to work every day not being able to provide the level of care they want to.”
The nurses’ report, which describes a crisis of “corridor care,” comes just months after another blockbuster report found that the N.H.S. was in “critical” condition.
Patients routinely waited hours for treatment as doctors tried to work without adequate medical equipment or sufficient space in hospitals, according to that report, which was commissioned by the government and published in September. It found that national satisfaction with the beleaguered health service was “at its lowest ever.”
The ramifications of the breakdown in care extend beyond the hospital corridors. Many Britons see a functioning N.H.S. — which was created after World War II and delivers health care that is free at the point of use to all Britons through a tax-funded model — as a core obligation of their government.
The coronavirus pandemic reignited debates about its deep failures and deepened those challenges. The dire state of the N.H.S. was a key factor in the Labour Party’s resounding victory in last year’s national election: Many Britons blame the austerity measures laid out by previous Conservative governments for the health service’s failures.
Labour has promised reforms, but the nurses’ union pushed for a more robust approach on Thursday. Professor Ranger, the union leader, called for “bold government action on an N.H.S. which has been neglected for so long,” and warned ministers to not “shirk responsibility.”
Over 90 percent of respondents to the union’s survey said patient care was compromised when delivered in an inappropriate setting.
The report described how patients have had to wait for CPR as nurses struggled to maneuver through a cramped corridor to get there in time. Often, patients endured unhygienic conditions, nurses said. Some had been sprayed with each other’s vomit. Incontinent patients are cleaned in corridors without privacy.
The toll is particularly evident for dying people. Patients have had to face their own deaths in cramped and busy places, according to the report, without any privacy. A corpse was discovered in hallways hours after death, a nurse said.
The report comes amid growing concerns about staffing at the N.H.S., which has struggled to recruit and retain young talent.
Many nurses who responded to the union’s survey, including one who described caring for about 40 patients in corridors and overflow spaces every day, said the inability to provide dignified care in appropriate settings has cratered staff morale. Junior doctors have gone on strike to protest low wages and long hours.
Nurses have also gone on strike in recent years to demand pay increases, better working conditions and help trying to address critical staffing shortages. In the report, many nurses said that they were burned out and leaving the N.H.S.
