Inside the London A&E operating under ‘siege conditions’

A frantic scene greeted Cait Donnelly when she arrived at the Whipps Cross A&E, in east London, three weeks ago. A senior officer for the Royal College of Nursing, she visits a lot of local hospitals to talk with members, and has seen a lot on those visits, but she says the situation in Whipps was “extreme”.

Beds were stuffed into the corridors leading out of the emergency unit; families were crammed on chairs beside those makeshift beds, trying to eat sandwiches or talk to their loved ones in spaces not wide enough for two trolleys side-by-side. A nurse was stationed at the end of one of those corridors redirecting ambulance crews down a different passage away from the line of patient beds. Another was in charge of managing triage — sifting through the cases of as many as 90 patients per shift, trying to create a list of which patients are in most desperate need of treatment and which can afford the risk of waiting.