A damning report on overcrowded hospitals added fuel to a painful debate over the crises at the National Health Service.
Patients are dying in the corridors of Britain’s hospitals. Pregnant women are receiving miscarriage treatments in semipublic places. Incontinent patients are cleaned next to vending machines.
Those are just some of the shocking revelations in a report published on Thursday by the Royal College of Nursing, a British nursing union. In the report, nurses described an overcrowding crisis that they said has led to a collapse in care, confidentiality and dignity across the country’s National Health Service.
“Vulnerable people are being stripped of their dignity and nursing staff are being denied access to vital lifesaving equipment,” Nicola Ranger, the general secretary and chief executive of the union, said in a statement.
The nation’s health care staff had reached a “breaking point,” she added in the report.
The 460-page report, which features anonymized testimony from more than 5,400 nurses surveyed from Dec. 18, 2024 to Jan. 11, is the latest mayday from British medical professionals. The union granted its members anonymity in order to speak freely, preventing repercussions from employers and protecting patient confidentiality, a spokesman said.
Doctors and nurses have struggled to care for the nearly 70 million people in the United Kingdom after years of challenges, including chronic underinvestment in the N.H.S. under Conservative-led governments that held power from 2010 to 2024.
“This must be a watershed moment, a line in the sand,” Dr. Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, said in a statement.