There are many images emerging from Accident and Emergency hospital departments that give a horrifying insight into the crisis in our National Health Service.
In recent days and weeks this newspaper has published images of people lying in pain on the floor of packed emergency departments, rows of ambulances queued outside hospitals with patients in the back and elderly and sick people waiting for hours on end on trolleys in chaotic corridors.
This weekend we reported on the grim accounts of doctors working in Aintree Hospital's A&E department, with one doctor stating: "This isn't healthcare, it is now a lottery whether you will survive."
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Several doctors spoke of their dismay at the fact busy corridors are now routinely used to house patients who are waiting for huge lengths of time for bed spaces on wards. One doctor said: "We now have call bells in the corridor, this has normalised corridors being used for patients."
This normalisation of corridor wards is evident by the recent installation of power sockets on those corridors. One image from Aintree shared with the ECHO shows power sockets and a sign which reads 'AED Corridor, Bed Space 20'.
We published this image as part of a Twitter thread detailing the pressure in hospitals and it provoked a huge response - including from many health workers around the country. Dr Andy Breakell, an emergency doctor said: "Corridors are being converted into clinical “spaces”. You need power supplies but also oxygen as cylinders run out. Toileting is a major issue / infection spread is another."
Another medic added: "This is appalling. Corridors are not bed spaces and this absolutely should not become the new normal."
The worrying state of the NHS and the conditions inside hospitals have provoked concerned reactions from ECHO readers. Emma Elliott said: "I genuinely thought we were past these days. I remember my nan being on corridors in the 80s. Things were so much better and humane by the time she was dying. The attrition of care in the last 10 years has been slow and steady, and we're further back than we started."
Kirstie Miuchison, a nursing sister, simply said: "The NHS is broken beyond repair." For Katey McConkey, the image of the newly installed socket and sign for a bed space was "even more shocking than the rows of beds" in corridors. She added: "It's as if we mean this to continue."
One of the doctors working in Aintree Hospital spoke about the grim impacts of the lack of proper spaces for care. They said: "Yesterday there were three incidents where a patient who was dying had to be taken into a cubicle to die, with the patient in that cubicle having to be moved out into a public area and another patient moved into resus.
They added: "This is not healthcare, it is care but it is not healthy - the population of this country is being failed and people are unnecessarily dying. It is now a lottery whether you survive. It is a war zone in there, just don't get ill.
"If you survive a seven-hour wait on the floor of a parked ambulance and then another huge wait in the corridor of a hospital then you are pretty lucky."
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