Doctor reveals ‘grim’ realities on NHS wards with staff giving ‘end-of-life’ care to patients on trollies

A doctor has described the harrowing reality of Britain’s A&E wards as she revealed staff were sometimes forced to give end-of-life care to patients in corridors on trollies.

Dr Rachel Clarke, a top palliative care doctor, shared the “grim” conditions found in NHS hospitals as she claimed “Dickensian” conditions are now the norm.

The former journalist who later retrained as a doctor recalled how she turned up for a morning shift to see a “broken” team and ten ambulances queuing outside the hospital with patients.

“You can’t really exaggerate how grim and crisis laden conditions are,” she told the former Downing Street director of communications Andy Coulson on his Crisis What Crisis? podcast.

“You know, we all see the news headlines. I walk into the A&E handover in the morning and I see a team who look absolutely broken from the night shift,

“There are ten ambulances queueing outside each with a patient, some of those patients are dying, they literally can’t even get into the hospital. There are patients in corridors on trollies.

“I might have to have an end of life conversation with a patient on a trolley in a corridor who doesn’t even have a curtain around them. It’s horrific, it’s sort of Dickensian. This is how broken the NHS is at the moment.”

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Source: The Independent, 5 September 2024

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