Increasing the community nursing workforce and boosting funding in general practice are among the key demands of health unions in Wales, as part of a new a campaign to ‘end corridor care’.
The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) Wales and British Medical Association (BMA) Cymru Wales have today launched a petition urging the Welsh Government to take ‘immediate action’ to end the practice of treating patients in corridors and other inappropriate hospital spaces.
It follows rising reports from nurses and doctors having to treat patients in dangerous and inappropriate spaces such as car parks and changing rooms.
The petition demands action on four key areas, including that district nursing numbers are brought above pre-2010 levels to meet rising patient demand and prevent unnecessary hospital admissions.
It has also called for an increased proportion of NHS Wales funding in general practice to support the training, recruitment and retention of GPs.
Helen Whyley, executive director of RCN Wales, said the system was ‘beyond breaking point’ and leaving patients in pain and without privacy or access to a ‘proper care environment’.
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‘Treating patients in corridors and other inappropriate areas is not nursing – it is crisis management in a system that is failing,’ she said.
She added: ‘Every day that we delay, more patients suffer. Patients deserve better. Nurses deserve better. Wales deserves better.’
The struggle to access GP services
Speaking at a press briefing today BMA Cymru Wales chair, Dr Iona Collins, said people were increasingly attending A&E ‘because we can’t get to our GP quickly enough’.
‘The big demand we have in A&E is the accumulation of those who require hospital treatments, those who require emergency social care, and those who require general practice,’ she explained.
‘We need to invest in community care, and we need to manage people so we can nip problems in the bud by improving our access to general practice.’
The four key asks of the RCN and BMA’s petition:
1. Begin recording and reporting on corridor care in Wales, starting by making it a ‘never event’ for patients to receive care in chairs for more than 24 hours.
2. Pause reductions in NHS Wales hospital beds. Nationally review capacity and deliver a clear, costed workforce plan to ensure hospitals and wider care settings can meet future demand.
3. Invest in community-based care by:
• increasing the number of District Nurses (and nurses with a community nursing master’s degree) back to, and above, 2010 levels to meet demand.
• restoring the proportion of NHS Wales funding in general practice to historic levels, with aspirations to increase, so that we train, recruit and retain enough GPs to move toward the OECD average number of GPs per 1000 people.
4. Prioritise prevention and early intervention. Sustainable emergency care needs a strong focus on population health and early diagnosis to reduce avoidable crises.
In response to the petition, a Welsh Government spokesperson said: ‘We do not endorse routine care in non-clinical environments where patient privacy or dignity is compromised.
‘However, there are occasions when the NHS faces exceptional pressures during high demand periods.’
And they appeared to reject the petition’s call on ‘never events’.
The spokesperson said: ‘Never events are recorded in the NHS as wholly preventable medical errors with the potential to cause serious harm, therefore the call to classify care for patients in chairs for more than 24 hours as a ‘never event’ does not meet the criteria, given the complex nature of causes.
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‘We’ve provided £200m additional funding this year to improve home care and hospital discharge timelines to address these challenges, which are not unique to Wales.’
How is the government planning to improve NHS performance?
Also today the Welsh health secretary, Jeremy Miles, accepted all 29 recommendations from a Ministerial Advisory Group (MAG) report into NHS performance and productivity.
The MAG, which was established last October, pointed to the decline in GP practice numbers across the country and revealed that the number of GP practices in Wales had reduced by 20 (5.1%) between September 2021 and September 2024.
The report also noted data which found a 1.4% reduction in general medical services (GMS) activity from September 2023/24 to 2024/25.
This represented a decline of almost 136,000 appointments offered in general practice, out of a total of 9.62 million appointments completed in the same period.
The fall in GP appointments combined with an increase in hospital staffing levels goes against the ‘left shifts’ from hospital to community and sickness to health that the government is currently prioritising as part of its 10 Year Health Plan, the report noted.
Between 2019 to 2024 there was a 15.14% rise in the number of staff employed within Health Boards in Wales.
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Primary care (GMS) staffing numbers also increased, to a far lesser degree, with an increase of 1.8 full-time equivalent staff per practice between September 2021 and September 2024, the report said.
In January, Care England said it was a ‘planning, funding and coordination’ issue within the social care sector that was contributing to increased corridor care and NHS delays.
