The Guardian gained rare access to Royal Stoke university hospital to see how staff free up beds for patients in a gridlocked system
Thirteen ambulances are lined up at the rear of the emergency department (ED) of the Royal Stoke university hospital, Staffordshire, as Ann-Marie Morris, the hospital trust’s deputy medical director, walks towards the entrance, squinting in the low afternoon sun. Behind the closed door of each vehicle is a sick patient, some of whom have been waiting for four hours or more, backed up in the car park, just to get in the door.
The reason they are stuck out here is that there are no beds in the ED – and there is not much corridor space, either. In the tight foyer, a cluster of ambulance staff and a senior nurse in hi-vis are huddled around a computer station. Behind them, a corridor stretches into the ward, where at least six or seven beds are lined up head to toe along one side, each occupied by a patient. Leading off to the left are three more beds and three more strained, watchful patients. Another patient and another bed are to the right.
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