Patients told to soil themselves in understaffed A&E

The Care Quality Commission has reported on an emergency department with 55-hour A&E corridor waits, and some frail patients being told to soil themselves because there was no one to take them to the toilet, while another had to urinate into a bottle without privacy curtains.

The CQC received dozens of reports of “information of concern” from patients and staff about the A&E at Medway Maritime Hospital, run by Medway Foundation Trust, in the months before it visited in February last year.

When they did so, inspectors were told staff feared reprisals if they raised concerns and that band 7 nurses “lived in fear of punishment from senior leaders”. Less than half of ED staff felt safe about speaking up, according to analysis of NHS staff survey results.

The department was rated “requires improvement“ overall – previously it had been “good” – but was labelled “inadequate” in the area of safety, and for “kindness, compassion and dignity”. Under a new CQC scoring system, the department was rated 38 out of 100 for safety.

Inspectors found many patients had a poor experience, with inadequate staffing, overcrowding and medication delays.

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Source: HSJ, 5 March 2025