A shocking Royal College of Nursing report reveals the toll chronic underfunding has taken on staff, and rings alarm bells for the future

I’ve never read a report quite like it. Last week the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) published accounts from the frontline of corridor care in NHS hospitals. There are next to no charts or statistics, no lists of recommendations or thematic analysis: just page after page – more than 400 – of testimony from nurses about patients being treated in appallingly undignified conditions in corridors, cupboards and storerooms across the NHS.

Astonishingly, there is no official data on how many patients are affected nationwide. So the RCN has filled the gap, sending out a member survey at the end of December and collating this report in a matter of days. It presents the raw, unvarnished truth about standards of care that once, in normal times, would have raised all kinds of official red flags. Today, they have become routine in every corner of the country, with some NHS trusts even advertising roles in corridor nursing.