NHS nightmare as patients forced to sleep on A&E floor and wait 45 hours for bed

Alarming figures show that nearly 2,300 people who needed a bed on a ward last month experienced delays of at least half a day.

Among them was a man who was rushed to the emergency department after he started vomiting blood, only to be forced to sleep on the floor as he endured an agonising 45-hour wait to be admitted.

Forklift driver Steven Wells, 31, said: “It was honestly like a war zone at times.

“It makes me not want to go back to hospital, as the last time was so traumatic and embarrassing.

“You have people looking down on you, stepping over you, and all you want is to just be looked after.

“I can definitely believe the stats, and it’s no surprise, but that doesn’t make it OK.

“They need more full-time proper staff in place. There’s no excuse at all for the way I was treated.

“If you’re in that much pain and discomfort, they should find a bed for you anywhere.

“The demand is just overrunning that hospital – everyone from Canterbury and Faversham is being forced to Ashford, and it must be so overwhelming.”

The 31-year-old, who arrived at hospital at 1am on 13 November and was not given a bed on a ward until 10pm on 14 November, had been taken to the William Harvey in Ashford, Kent.

This hospital’s A&E department is run by East Kent Hospitals, the branch which has been worst hit by the crisis.

Last month 1,168 patients waited at least 12 hours for a bed – the seventh highest in the whole of England – while just 45 per cent of people experiencing an emergency were dealt with inside the target time of four hours.

One woman who knows too well the trauma of these long delays is Sandra Yeman, 78, who is terrified of being admitted to hospital again after waiting an excruciating four days for a bed at Medway Maritime in Gillingham, Kent.

The great-grandmother-of-three, who has endured three spells in hospital since the coronavirus pandemic, said: “I really am frightened to go back again.

“I don’t want to be there for three or four days in absolute agony and nobody not being able to do anything about it.

“I was in an awful lot of pain and they didn’t seem as though they were doing a lot about it.

“The latest statistics don’t fill me with confidence, but it doesn’t actually surprise me because things really are getting worse – there are no improvements at all.”

Despite her concerns, the retired baker, who received an apology from the hospital’s chief executive for her ordeal, recognises the strain that NHS workers are under.

She said: “The staff were mostly excellent, but they’re under so much pressure from the get-go.

“There are so many departments which really do need so much more help. I don’t know where to say to start with.

“We need more doctors, we need more nurses, but we also need more beds and more places for people.

“And to be honest, there are too many old people needing treatment and just not enough resources to go around – I remember when there used to be multiple hospitals in Rochester alone.

“I’ve paid my bit towards national insurance and tax over the years and all you want is to be seen promptly, but it just doesn’t feel like that happens for most people.”

Unfortunately, the crisis in Kent, and in other parts of the country, shows no signs of easing – with more junior doctor strikes looming and the winter months driving an increase in flu and other respiratory viruses.

Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, slammed the scale of the corridor-wait crisis as “extremely concerning”, particularly for the elderly.

Meanwhile, Dr Vicky Price, president-elect of the Society for Acute Medicine, added: “We have been warning of the dangers of corridor care almost all year, and the fact it has persisted for such a duration reflects that it is now perceived as routine practice – but it is unacceptable.

“It is not safe, particularly for older patients. It is degrading and it is demoralising for staff.”

One of the primary causes of corridor waits is so-called “bed-blocking” – when patients no longer needing treatment are kept in hospital because there is no suitable place for them to go, such as a care home or specially adapted accommodation.

In the last week of November, 3,330 inpatients across Kent – excluding Medway – were considered well enough to be discharged, but only 1,583 left hospital.

Nadra Ahmed, who chairs the Medway-based National Care Association, says ongoing recruitment problems in the sector are a major factor.

She explained: “We have still got the same issues because it is highly dependent on workforce.

“There are packages that can’t be put together by domiciliary care providers because they do not have the workforce.

“Every year we seem to be in the same place: every year winter seems to creep up on us; the sector is wholly ignored until it becomes a crisis.

“If you can’t maintain a sustainable sector, you are always going to have these problems.”

Kent County Council, which oversees social care in the region, and NHS Kent and Medway both say they are working hard to speed up discharges.

The latter added that a “sustained increase” in patient numbers has heaped pressure on the county’s A&Es, with a spokesperson insisting that lengthy delays are “never what we want”.

“We have projects in place to improve waiting times and are focusing on helping people leave hospital as soon as possible, allowing more patients to be admitted to beds,” they said.

Sarah Hayes – the chief nursing and midwifery officer at East Kent Hospitals – apologised to those who have experienced extended waits in A&E.

She said extensions of the emergency departments at the William Harvey and QEQM will provide an extra 21 “dedicated care spaces”, with the former completed last week and the latter set to finish next month.

“We are also working to improve our discharge processes, and with NHS and social care partners, to maximise capacity both within the hospitals and in the community settings to enable patients to be discharged safely and quickly, and free up beds for patients needing to be admitted from the emergency department.”

In addition to A&E waiting times, bed-blocking also impacts ambulance response times – as crews are forced to wait outside while overcrowded wards hold up patient handovers.

During what was described as a “sustained period of significantly high demand” on Monday (11 December), disabled grandmother Tracy Mulhall was left lying on the road for almost four hours until an ambulance arrived.

South East Coast Ambulance Service apologised for the delay in reaching the 56-year-old, who had toppled off her mobility scooter in Westgate-on-Sea.

Ms Mulhall said: “The people of Westgate were angels to me. But I hate to think about what would have happened if no one had been there.

“It’s unacceptable, the way I was treated. The system is well and truly broken.”