An 80-year-old retired nurse says she fears for the NHS she loves after spending 24 hours on a corridor full of patients at a Liverpool hospital.
The pressure on the National Health Service remains intense and corridor care has become something of a norm in many hospitals. Former nurse Val Johnstone was shocked at what she experienced after being rushed into the new Royal Liverpool Hospital recently.
Val, who lives on her own in sheltered housing in Woolton, was suffering from sickness and dizziness and was taken by ambulance to the hospital's Accident and Emergency department on Thursday, March 2.
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Describing the experience as she arrived at the hospital, Val said: "They brought me into a corridor on a trolley. It was disgusting to see how many paramedics were stranded there with so many sick people lining the corridors, it was beyond belief. There were ambulances queuing outside.
"All these paramedics were there waiting with the patients and helping them with things like going to the toilets because the nurses were so busy looking after other people.
"This was just the first corridor I was on and people were queueing up on trolleys around me. Then I eventually got taken into a second corridor, there were 27 separate spaces and they were all full with people on trolleys."
Val says she was on the two corridors for more than 24 hours. She says staff were doing their very best to care for patients in very difficult surroundings.
She added: "When a doctor is assessing you on a trolley in a corridor there is no real privacy, no real dignity - everyone can hear what is going on. This is in no way the staff's fault, it is awful what they are dealing with."
As a former NHS nurse, Val says she was heartbroken to see such a situation within an NHS hospital. She said: "Until you are there you don't really realise what they are dealing with and why NHS staff are striking. It's not just about pay, it is more about the duty of care they have to their patients and how they just can't carry out their care properly.
"I want the public to know what this is all really about, it is about care. I can't believe the state our NHS is in."
Val - who is now home and feeling better - was an NHS nurse for many years before moving to Portugal in the 1990s where she set up her own nursing service. She said the job seems unrecognisable now.
She added: "I never worked a 13 or 14 hour shift but now they are all doing these hours. I feel so disheartened for them. The system is just broken and it's no wonder people are leaving the job.
"I entered this world and there was no NHS. Then in 1948, it was and we became the envy of the world. I am now of an age where we no longer have a wonderful NHS, just a crumbling decay, how sad."
Responding to Val's comments, David Melia, Chief Nurse at Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, said: “Like many hospitals, we continue to experience high levels of demand and challenges discharging patients who no longer require hospital care, which means we cannot always admit patients from A&E as quickly as we would like to.
“Our A&E colleagues are working incredibly hard to provide safe care in what are extremely challenging circumstances and our Patient Advice and Complaints Team is available if Val would like to discuss any aspects of her care with us directly.
“Local communities can help us by only using A&E when it is an emergency, and using the NHS 111 service to find alternative services if they have less urgent concerns.”
A spokesperson for NHS Cheshire and Merseyside said: “Our priority, as always, is to ensure safe and high-quality care for people in Cheshire and Merseyside, but is no secret that urgent and emergency services up and down the country are under significant pressure. The NHS continues to employ tried and tested plans to respond to periods of pressure.
“Too many patients currently remain in hospital despite being medically-fit for discharge. Intensive and focused work is underway with health and care partners, including those in local Government, to urgently address this challenge.”
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