Patients are being forced to sleep on floors with people stepping over them at a busy hospital in West Yorkshire – as the NHS winter chaos gripping Britain continues to worsen.
Shocking images taken at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield show members of the public lying down in corridors.
In one photo a patient dressed only in a loose hospital gown lies next to a metal wheelchair. A second shows a man, attached to a drip, bedded down with his head resting on his rolled-up coat.
Shocking images taken at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield show members of the public being forced to sleep on floors
The images were taken by a 57-year-old woman and passed to Tracy Brabin, MP for Batley and Spen.
The woman, who has asked not to be named, described conditions as worse than prison and stressed people were being forced to sleep on floors at the hospital regularly.
She said: ‘This state of affairs at Pinderfields is not just in A&E and not just at Christmas. It’s happening on a regular basis.
‘People were sitting around in chairs, shivering. In 2018 people should not be having to sleep on the floor without either a pillow or a blanket. If you were in prison you would be offered a pillow and a blanket – and a bed.
‘I have nothing but admiration for the doctors and nurses. They were working tirelessly but there were not enough of them. They are run ragged.’
She continued: ‘The man who was lying on the floor at the bottom of my husband’s bed was being sick.
‘He was asking for a trolley to lie on but there wasn’t one to give him. He was there for a few hours. People were stepping over him. I never expected to see that.’
The pictures, which reveal the true extent of the NHS winter crisis, were taken in the early hours of January 2 in the cubicle area of Pinderfields’ Accident & Emergency department.
The unnamed woman and her husband had travelled by ambulance 20 miles from their home to Pinderfields at one o’clock in the morning.
‘What I saw the other night is the result of downgrading Dewsbury Hospital, and staff just can’t cope. They’re wanting to close Huddersfield Royal Infirmary as well. It’s absolute madness.’
The pictures, which reveal the true extent of the NHS winter crisis, were taken in the early hours of January 2 in the cubicle area of Pinderfields’ Accident & Emergency department
The unnamed woman from Heckmondwike, West Yorkshire also responded to claims from a health chief that chairs were available for all patients waiting to be seen.
‘You can understand people being tired and lying on the floor but it was not really like that,’ she explained.
‘People are waiting hours and hours and hours and have to sit on hard metal chairs.
‘After you have spent so many hours sitting in a chair when you are poorly you will get into any position you can to be comfortable.’
David Melia, Director of Nursing and Quality at the Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs Pinderfields, said the Trust had received no complaints regarding the care of the two patients identified in the photographs, ‘who may have chosen to lie down as seats were provided.