Doctors and nurses have also spoken of elderly people being treated in toilets and people dying waiting for beds in shocking testimony as they demand action from the Welsh Government to end ‘corridor care’
Patients in Wales are dying, diagnoses are missed and outcomes made worse because people can’t get hospital beds, the Royal College of Nursing and British Medical Association Cymru Wales have warned as they launch a report with a litany of dire cases from across every health board.
Testimony from doctors and nurses included a patient who died in a hospital waiting room when they should have had a bed, an elderly woman examined in a toilet because it was the only space available, and sick children treated in “cupboards”. Patients were being forced to wait on plastic chairs and trolleys for hours and even days and nights without access to proper monitoring, refreshments or toilets in the “crowded, chaotic atmosphere” in Wales’ hospitals, the report said.
One medic working at a hospital in the Hywel Dda Health Board area told the report: “A patient was sat in a waiting room, when they should have been on a bed. They collapsed and died in the waiting room. Unfortunately, this is not something that’s uncommon.” For our free daily briefing on the biggest issues facing the nation, sign up to the Wales Matters newsletter here
In other cases patients made to wait on chairs without access to toilets have urinated themselves while staff struggle to care for people in areas without access to piped oxygen and other monitoring equipment.
Some patients give up and go home without treatment because the wait is so frightening and uncomfortable, doctors and nurses report. Others have resorted to sleeping on hospital floors while they wait for assessment.
. You can read about how one hospital advertised for nurses to work in corridors here.
The testimony from the Royal College of Nursing and British Medical Association Cymru Wales is backed up by a recent survey from the Royal College of Emergency Medicine which showed that in the first quarter of 2025, every accident and emergency department in Wales recorded seeing patients in unsafe, inappropriate spaces with almost half of patients waiting for an inpatient bed. You can read our full report on that here.
Now the RCN and BMA in Wales have joined forces to address what they describe as ” the alarming state of corridor care in Welsh hospitals and healthcare services”.
On Tuesday ( April 29), they launched a joint petition urging the Welsh Government to take immediate action to end the practice of treating patients in corridors, chairs, waiting areas and “all other inappropriate areas”.
Both unions are asking the public to sign the petition after nurses and doctors reported being forced to treat patients “in inappropriate and undignified environments putting them at risk of significant harm”.
Launching the report they warned people were dying or not getting the best outcomes, just because they were not getting hospital beds.
Dr Iona Collins, chair of the BMA Welsh Council and a spinal surgeon at Morriston Hospital in Swansea, said the number of hospital beds in Wales had plunged from 19,000 25 years ago to just over 10,000 now and urged health boards to “stop closing beds”.
Dr Collins said a range of pressures were mounting on hospitals including cuts to social care, causing delays in discharges and problems with access to GP services, forcing people to go to accident and emergency departments as the only point of self-referral.
She said newly qualified GPs could not find work in Wales and some general practices had closed. Wales was also hit by not receiving what it should in consequential funding from Westminster when more cash went to the health service there, she said, but the BMA and RCN pointed out health was devolved and the matter rested firmly with Cardiff Bay
The petition calls on the Welsh Government to:
- Begin recording and reporting on corridor care in Wales, starting by making it a ‘never event’ for patients to receive care in chairs for more than 24 hours.
- Pause reductions in NHS Wales hospital beds. Nationally review capacity and deliver a clear, costed workforce plan to ensure hospitals and wider care settings can meet future demand.
- Invest in community-based care by increasing the number of district nurses (and nurses with a community nursing master’s degree) back to, and above, 2010 levels to meet demand; and restoring the proportion of NHS Wales funding in general practice to historic levels, with aspirations to increase, so that we train, recruit and retain enough GPs to move toward the OECD average number of GPs per 1000 people.
- Prioritise prevention and early intervention. Sustainable emergency care needs a strong focus on population health and early diagnosis to reduce avoidable crises.
The launch of the petition was prompted by an overwhelming number of testimonies from doctors and nurses highlighting what the RCN and BMA described as “the dire consequences of corridor care”
Helen Whyley, executive director of RCN Wales, said: “We are beyond breaking point. I have travelled across Wales and witnessed people in pain, confused and frightened, with no privacy, no dignity, and no proper care environment.
“Treating patients in corridors and other inappropriate areas is not nursing – it is crisis management in a system that is failing.
“Corridor care is unsafe, undignified, and unacceptable. The Welsh Government must act now, working with health unions and NHS leaders to implement urgent and meaningful changes.”
“Every day that we delay, more patients suffer. Patients deserve better. Nurses deserve better. Wales deserves better.”
Stephen Kelly, chair of the BMA’s Welsh consultants’ committee, described the risks to patients: “When a patient is not placed in a bed space there’s a chance something vital may be missed, there’s no access to monitoring equipment and no privacy to carry out certain procedures.
“This is dangerous and is putting patients’ lives at risk, we urge the Welsh Government to work with us to put a stop to this practice.
“We’re extremely concerned that the ‘normalising’ of seeing patients in completely inappropriate spaces will mean that patients come to significant harm which is hugely distressing for patients but also NHS staff.
“This affects everyone in Wales, and we urge people to sign the petition and help us to put an end to corridor care.”
Anonymous testimonies of corridor care from doctors and nurses working in hospitals across Wales:
“I have seen patients where diagnoses have been missed due to inadequate places to examine them”
“Multiple patients with severe injuries to bones are sitting in chairs waiting for beds for 48 to 72 hours in best case scenario”
“I routinely see patients on the back of an ambulance, patients whose treatments are delayed due to no beds or cardiac monitoring spaces”
“I’ve had patients discharge against medical advice as they can’t stand to stay in a chair any longer”
“There are patients who are damaged by this that never go home because they deteriorate so much during their “corridor care”.
“Patients who are in the waiting room or in the corridor often don’t have access to basic facilities such as water, food and toilet access. This is particularly problematic for frail elderly patients or those with dementia”
“We regularly have patients on cardiac monitors in chairs in corridors. It’s a regular occurrence for patients to have seizures on chairs.”
“An elderly gentleman had had a stroke but was placed on a chair in a waiting room where he waited, on a chair, for hours. It was very chaotic. We didn’t have a bed in our area. I speak to colleagues across Wales and we’re all in the same boat.”
“We visited [a ward where staff] have to give the senior nurses names of patients on a daily basis that they think are suitable to be moved to a corridor space within the hospital to allow for another patient to come into their area.”
“Community hospitals used a dining area for patient care – these areas have no piped oxygen or suction.””
In response to the report, the petition and its recommendations and questions about funding, social care and general practice in Wales, the Welsh Government said: “We do not endorse routine care in non-clinical environments where patient privacy or dignity is compromised. However, there are occasions when the NHS faces exceptional pressures during high demand periods.
“Never events are recorded in the NHS as wholly preventable medical errors with the potential to cause serious harm, therefore the call to classify care for patients in chairs for more than 24 hours as a ‘never event’ does not meet the criteria, given the complex nature of causes.
“We’ve provided £200m additional funding this year to improve home care and hospital discharge timelines to address these challenges, which are not unique to Wales.”
BMA and RCN are calling on the public to help demand action from the Welsh Government by signing the petition which can be seen and filled in here: End corridor care in Wales – Petitions
