Emergency doctors hit out at NHS guidance on treating patients in corridors

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/emergency-doctors-hit-out-nhs-guidance-treating-patients-corridors

A support worker stands in a corridor as the first patients are admitted to the NHS Seacole Centre at Headley Court, Surrey, May 2020

EMERGENCY doctors have expressed concern today about a new guide on how to treat patients in corridors, saying it is “normalising the dangerous.”

NHS England recently produced guidance on “providing safe and good quality care in temporary escalation spaces.”

But the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) said the “nonsensical” guidance is out of touch and that it is “not possible to provide safe and good quality care” in corridors or cupboards.

The guidance acknowledges corridor care is “not acceptable and should not be considered as standard,” but due to current pressures some hospitals are “using temporary escalation spaces more regularly — and this use is no longer ‘in extremis’.”

It suggests how staff can deliver the “safest, most effective and highest quality care possible” to patients in these circumstances.

In a statement yesterday, the college said: “Advice from arm’s length bodies that appear out of touch with what is happening in our departments was always going to be poorly received.”

The use of corridors will lead to long waits in emergency departments, “associated with measurable harm to patients,” it added.

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Thousands of ambulance workers strike amid ‘disheartening’ and ‘demoralising’ conditions in the NHS

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Image reads Accident & Emergency, A & E

THOUSANDS of ambulance workers across England and Wales took strike action today in face of the “disheartening” and “demoralising” conditions in the NHS.

Up to 25,000 paramedics, call handlers, drivers and technicians from Unison and GMB took part in the action across 24 hours in a dispute with the government over pay.

Workers on the picket lines said it was the last place they wanted to be, describing regular hours-long waits to hand over patients from ambulances to the care of doctors and nurses.

Paramedic Jenny Giblin, on a picket line in Birkenhead, Wirral, with her 16-month-old son, said the situation had “definitely got worse” in her seven-year career.

She said: “Corridors are almost like wards. Sometimes you spend a whole shift on a corridor.

https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/b/thousands-of-ambulance-workers-strike-amid-disheartening-and-demoralising-conditions-in-the-nhs

Continue ReadingThousands of ambulance workers strike amid ‘disheartening’ and ‘demoralising’ conditions in the NHS