NHS A&E delays and corridor care are “a type of torture” for patients, nurses warn.
The Royal College of Nursing said its members are losing hope that the system will improve.
Polling by YouGov revealed that 18 per cent of people have witnessed patients being looked after in corridors or other overflow areas.
The RCN repeated a report published last year that revealed patients have died in public view on chairs or gurneys while they waited for help.
Responses from 436 NHS staff last week suggest the problem has got worse.
The report said one patient was kept on a chair for four days, another choked to death alone while waiting in a corridor, and nurses have to hold sheets up if patients need privacy.
Patients ‘would rather have risked dying at home’
One anonymous nurse working in the South West said: “I imagine patients feel deeply embarrassed and uncared for, wishing they had never come in and would rather have taken the risk of dying at home than go through the torture.
“Because that’s what we subject them to – a type of torture.”
Another confessed she had nightmares after a patient died in a lounge that was turned into a ward.
And one added: “My anxiety is at an all-time high.
“I will not sleep the day before a shift.”
Staff and patients report A&E visitors vomiting, soiling themselves, screaming in pain, becoming violent and even dying while waiting for a hospital bed.
Wards are so full that around 50,000 people each month wait 12 hours or longer to be admitted.
The Sun revealed last week that a Bath hospital is handing patients leaflets to apologise for keeping them in the corridor.
RCN chief Professor Nicola Ranger said: “Nursing staff declared a national emergency on the issue of corridor care over 18 months ago but, far from being eradicated, it has become a permanent fixture.”
Dr Ian Higginson, of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, added: “Our patients are forced to endure these conditions because our hospitals are full to bursting.”
GRANDAD DIED IN CORRIDOR AFTER 18-HOUR WAIT
GRAHAM Millward, 87, “suffocated to death” on a trolley in an A&E corridor in front of his wife and daughter after waiting 18 hours to get inside, an inquest found this year.
The grandad was left deprived of oxygen at Telford’s Princess Royal Hospital following a long wait outside in an ambulance receiving area.
An inquest heard he had been admitted to the hospital on January 9 this year after paramedics were called to his nursing home in Wellington, Shropshire.
But on arrival at the hospital, there was no room on a ward, so Graham was forced to wait in the ambulance receiving area for a shocking 18 hours.
Daughter Paula, 60, said when he was finally taken to A&E, there was still no cubicle ready and staff failed to attach his oxygen properly, leaving him “gasping for air.”
She said: “My father did not deserve this. He was deprived of a dignified passing and I was forced to watch him take his final breaths.”
A statement from a doctor at the hospital was read to the coroner’s court.
He said there was a failure to deliver oxygen therapy when it should have been given, and that it was “more likely than not” the error caused Graham “distress” and “hastened his passing”.
Dr John Jones, medical director at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospitals Trust, said: “We would like to offer our deepest condolences to the family of Graham and apologise for the care he received.”
