Caving ceilings and plummeting lifts: inside our NHS hospitals

The ceiling of an intensive care ward collapsed onto a patient on life support and hours later a falling lift broke a doctor’s leg in a 24-hour snapshot of Britain’s crumbling NHS hospitals last week.

Staff rushed to evacuate the ten-bed unit at the Princess Alexandra Hospital, in Harlow, Essex, and the local trust declared a major incident on Thursday morning as engineers carried out urgent safety checks and patients were moved to other wards.

The next day, a surgeon was in a lift at the Royal London Hospital, in Whitechapel, east London, when the lift plummeted four floors. His leg was broken when the lift’s emergency brakes activated. Hospital managers shut down four other lifts pending a safety investigation. The day before, another lift in the hospital had also fallen.

The incidents signify that “chickens are coming home to roost” after years of underinvestment in NHS facilities, Dame Meg Hillier, chairwoman of the Commons public accounts committee, said.

“It’s a sign of the crumbling infrastructure, not just of our hospitals but of the whole country,” she said. “These are not conditions that patients or hospital staff should have to work in.”

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Source: The Times, 17 March 2024