The NHS model of care that we have, the provision of free healthcare services based on clinical need, poses well-known challenges. Nursing and medicine do not stand still, new treatments regularly come on stream, new diseases also come along, and these must be properly managed. We can add to the mix a growing elderly population often presenting with several chronic conditions. All this needs to be factored into everyday healthcare practice. We have all seen media stories about long waiting lists, delays in getting appointments and now ‘corridor care’. The NHS needs to be able to cope and balance matters – all much easier said than done.
The NHS model of care that we all benefit from can never be fundamentally changed as this would not be politically acceptable; no government would risk the wrath of an electorate by fundamentally altering the foundation of the NHS too much. The NHS Constitution for England and its principles, rights and pledges (Department of Health and Social Care, 2023) sets a good baseline on which to set our expectations of the NHS. One particularly related to patient safety is on quality of care and environment:
‘You have the right to be treated with a professional standard of care, by appropriately qualified and experienced staff, in a properly approved or registered organisation that meets required levels of safety and quality. ‘You have the right to be cared for in a clean, safe, secure, and suitable environment…’
The issue of corridor care is a major national concern that has attracted a lot of media attention. This issue carries important legal as well as patient safety implications. Legal claims could result if patients could establish that they were treated negligently and have suffered harm as a result, and, on the other side, nursing and other staff have several possible legal routes open to them to deal with the issue of workplace stress.
Corridor care: What does ‘temporary’ mean in practice?
NHS England (2024) has provided a key framework to support staff when ‘temporary escalation spaces’ (TES) are used. The guidance begins with the statement that care delivery in TES such as corridors or chairs and so on due to overcrowding is not acceptable and should not be considered as standard. Here we have our first challenge with the concept of TES and whether treating patients in corridors has now become ‘normalised’ in the NHS. There are reports of job advertisement for ‘corridor care nurses’ and structural changes to corridors, the addition of call bells and so on in corridors to facilitate treatment and care (Lintern and Wheeler, 2025; Royal College of Nursing (RCN); 2025). Many nurse respondents to the recent RCN survey on experiences of corridor care pointed to seemingly permanent changes to accommodate corridor care:
‘Corridor nursing is a daily occurrence in my department. So much so that we have put in safety measures with call bells and a crash trolley in the corridor.’
RCN, 2025:13
‘Now a regular occurrence in accident and emergency. The allocation has corridor nurses on it now, so you're assigned purely to take care of corridor patients sometimes 30 plus who are having to be changed with dividers put round their trolley.’
RCN, 2025:103
Also, there are structural changes taking place:
‘They then opened the DTA corridor which involves 17 beds built into what was formerly a narrow corridor connecting the three units mentioned above. There were curtains built into the ceiling which are no wider then the beds themselves, therefore when attempting to deliver care you are literally sticking out of the curtains. The beds have no space between them, and patients have their feet touching the next person's head. This means nobody has any dignity.’
RCN, 2025:85
The ‘temporary’ nature of corridor care in the NHS can be seriously challenged by the above.
Patient safety issues and the theory–practice chasm
Going back to the NHS England (2024) guidance, ‘Principles for providing safe and good quality care in temporary escalation spaces’, the title itself has come in for criticism:
‘The title is a contradiction. Its basic premises are at loggerheads. Safe and good quality care cannot co-exist with treatment in corridors.’
The NHS England (2024) guidance is detailed in terms of patient safety actions. Core principles covered are: assessment of risk, escalation, quality of care, raising concerns and reporting incidents, data collection and measuring harm, and de-escalation. Regarding quality of care, it is also stated that patient safety is imperative and patient selection is key. It is recognised that patient experience will not be optimal, and points are made about maintaining patient privacy, dignity and so on. The need for staff to speak up and raise any concerns is emphasised in principle 4.
It is worth reading the criticism of the guidance from Sheather and Phillips (2025), Healthwatch England et al (2025) and Wise (2025). The framework set out by NHS England (2024) seems, in theory, to provide a reasonable patient safety baseline in terms of expectations and advice. However, the RCN (2025) survey shows the stark reality of what is happening at ward level with the practice of corridor care. There is a serious mismatch between the theory and the practice. It is always easier to state the theory in the abstract. The real difficulty lies in putting that into practice in what could be regarded as ‘battlefield’ healthcare environments where there are so many pressures.
RCN survey: chronic patient safety issues identified
The survey of RCN members (RCN, 2025) provides a valuable real-time view of the harrowing experiences and patient safety issues that many nurses and their patients face daily with corridor care. The report was based on the responses of 5408 nursing staff across the UK from 18 December 2024 to 11 January 2025; 66.81% responded saying they had delivered care daily in an inappropriate setting not designed for patient care such as a corridor or storage area and 90.82% said that patient care and safety was compromised. The survey report runs to 460 pages and catalogues a truly shocking state of affairs:
‘No dignity. Unsafe – no access to suction or oxygen. No curtains for privacy. Care given in public.’
RCN, 2025: 246
‘I had to change an incontinent, frail patient with dementia on the corridor, by the vending machine. It was undignifying, felt so bad at the same time it was my duty to deliver care.’
‘Delay diagnoses due to delay in imaging and other investigations unable to perform in corridors. Lack of provision for those requiring oxygen therapy – risk of using portable gases for prolonged periods. Unable to provide adequate personal care due to lack of privacy. Increased risk when forced to administer critical treatments in inappropriate setting (eg IV bronchodilators on portable monitoring).’
RCN, 2025:18
These are just some of the many responses from nurses in the survey report, which shows acute patient safety problems happening with corridor care, along with the intense stress and emotional toil that it exacts on nurses, patients, and others. A previous detailed report from the RCN (Hadden and Tse, 2024) discussed factors contributing to corridor care and its implications; this latest report focuses on the ‘unvarnished, raw’ testimony of nursing staff on the front line.
A legal perspective
It has been seen that there are acute patient safety implications with corridor care. There are also important legal implications, which will depend on the circumstances of each case. A patient may well be able to establish a clinical negligence claim, arguing that they have been negligently treated, and this has caused them harm. Clinical negligence law is a complex and expensive area of civil litigation. Hospitals and staff owe their patients a legal duty of care. The patient claimant must show that this duty has been breached and further, has caused or materially contributed to their damage, harm. In determining breach of duty, several cases will need to be discussed by the lawyers involved. As Herring (2020:116) pointed out:
‘It is unclear the extent to which lack of resources will be a defence to a claim in negligence.’
The case of Garcia v St Mary's NHS Trust [2006] EWHC 2314 (QB) is quoted by Herring and is a relevant case to the discussion here. One allegation in the case was that the hospital was negligent in the way that it dealt with the organisation of staffing levels and staff response time was a key issue. The court did not find any negligence. The case is useful for its discussion on the organisation of care departments and staffing. The key watchwords here are what is ‘reasonable’ and ‘foreseeable’.
The case of Mullholland v Medway NHS Foundation Trust [2015] EWHC 268 (QB) is also instructive to the corridor care crisis. Herring (2020:116) states:
‘The court will take into account the situation in which professionals find themselves.’
An intensely pressurised care environment such as the emergency department with urgent cases streaming in could possibly be viewed differently to one where the pressure is less in terms of assessing the standard of care to be exercised and breach of duty.
This legal aspect to corridor care does, I feel, need to be factored in much more to the debates about the issue. Lawyers involved in clinical negligence will be aware of the legal issues surrounding corridor care and will be able to advise their patient clients accordingly. It should also not be forgotten that many nurses featured in the reports on corridor care appear to be suffering or have suffered from workplace stress and this also has important legal implications. Employers owe a legal duty of care to their employees to protect their health, safety and wellbeing, including their mental health.
Conclusion
The issue of corridor care is a vexed one and strikes at the heart of NHS care delivery. The reasons for corridor care are various and subject to intense political debate. However, we do have it and as such it raises serious patient safety and legal issues. Whether corridor care has become normalised remains an intense point of concern. There is evidence in the reports discussed in this column to suggest that it may have in some instances.