The health secretary has said some patients’ experience of the NHS this winter makes him feel “ashamed”. Wes Streeting said he had seen patients left crying and distressed and stuck in corridors, as hospitals struggle to cope. It comes as a number of NHS trusts declare critical incidents due to exceptionally high demand in A&E. NHS sources told BBC News about a dozen hospitals in England had declared major incidents, at one point on Tuesday.
Streeting told LBC he had seen A&E patients confused and crying out in distress, while others had been being treated in corridors, during a recent hospital visit. “When I went in, they said, ‘You are here on a fairly good day – it’s not too bad today,'” he said. “And as I walked around these conditions, I was looking around thinking, ‘This is a good day?'”
Streeting promised to do “everything I can” to “make sure that year-on-year, we see consistent improvement”. It would “take time” – but the government would publish an urgent and emergency reform plan “shortly”. “In the meantime, I feel genuinely distressed and ashamed, actually, of some of the things that patients are experiencing and I know that the staff of the NHS and social-care services feel the same – they go to work, they slog their guts out, and it’s very distressing for them, seeing people in this condition, as well,” Streeting said.
He said he had also seen ambulance crews taking dying patients into hospital because there was no end-of-life care available for them in the community. “It breaks my heart,” Streeting added.
Critical incidents were also declared in the East Midlands, Birmingham, Devon, Cornwall, Northamptonshire and Hampshire.
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