Patients are dying in A&E corridors - but I've seen how things could be different | Sophie

When I started nursing at 21 we were able to deliver timely, good care. That has become nearly impossible

Sophie (not her real name) is a member of the Royal College of Nursing and a senior A&E nurse in a hospital in the south of England

I began my career as an A&E nurse in 2010, when I was 21. It was a completely different world. If a patient needed immediate attention, there was easily the capacity for two nurses to look after them straight away. The NHS target of seeing patients within a four-hour window wasn’t something we gave much thought to, as it was pretty much a given that a patient would be admitted, transferred or discharged within that time. I don’t ever recall seeing a patient and feeling awful about how long they had waited.

It’s amazing to think how common it used to be for emergency departments to be almost empty at times in the evenings. As well as being much needed respite from the demands of the job, it was also a valuable time to learn from more senior colleagues. Nurses with decades of experience would take new recruits under their wings and help us practise our skills. That time is when I learned to plaster limbs and dress wounds. I wish I could do the same for my junior colleagues now. We used to be able to give timely, good care – now it has become near impossible.

Things started to noticeably change in about 2015. There were fewer slow periods, patients were having to wait longer and the four-hour target started to be missed more regularly. It gradually got worse over the following years, but really ramped up when restrictions relaxed after the second Covid outbreak in the winter of 2020-21 . That was the bomb that hasn’t stopped going off. It felt like we were in a constant state of catch-up, beds filling up and more patients arriving, There was just no break.

Now, patients in my A&E can wait up to 16 hours to be seen by a doctor. Not in a million years would that have happened when I started. It’s not just those waiting for treatment in A&E either, as large numbers of our patients get stuck in our department despite having been assessed and referred to a specialist. There’s simply no room for them elsewhere.

Long waits are now normalised and much of my job is spent dealing with patients’ justified anger and upset. It’s exhausting, but I don’t blame them. Waiting that long in a brightly lit and noisy A&E, with little to no rest, is akin to torture. It would leave anyone upset.

Corridor care – patients being treated in corridors and other inappropriate spaces such as store cupboards – is a daily occurrence. Alongside long waits, it’s the clearest indicator of just how far care standards have fallen. In my hospital, we do our best to avoid it, but the level of demand is such that we have no choice. The other week, a patient of ours died in the corridor. Alone in a loud, busy environment and with no privacy. It was utterly heartbreaking.