Karen reflects on leaving her mum receiving care on an A&E corridor.
It’s 11pm, and Karen is heading home after reluctantly leaving her 82-year-old mum in an A&E corridor.
She is visibly exhausted and close to tears, saying she “feels dreadful” about leaving her mum in hospital.
Speaking into the camera on her phone, Karen describes the narrow corridor as being like “Wigan station”. There is not enough room for her to sit beside her mum, and every time a trolley passes, she has to move out of the way.
But Karen’s presence is about more than simply being beside her mum. Her mum struggles to vocalise what is wrong and cannot summarise her medical history herself.
“I have to be the voice of my mum,” Karen says.
For Karen, the guilt of leaving is made harder by knowing how much her mum relies on her to communicate. Her experience comes against the backdrop of a longstanding problem across the NHS: patients receiving care in corridors and other spaces not designed for it.
Known as corridor care, it refers to patients receiving treatment or waiting for assessment, admission or transfer in clinically inappropriate spaces, such as hospital corridors.
