Patients continue to be cared for in hospital corridors across Wales, a practice described by unions and clinicians as unsafe and undignified, but the true scale and year-round prevalence of so-called corridor care remain poorly documented.
Snapshot survey shows widespread corridor use
A short survey by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) conducted in January and February 2025 reported that all 12 major emergency departments in Wales were treating patients in corridors. At the time of that survey, an average of 13.5% of patients in major emergency departments were being treated on trolleys in corridors or other inappropriate spaces.
The Royal College of Nursing Wales (RCN) and the British Medical Association Cymru Wales (BMA) have campaigned to end corridor care, jointly submitting a petition to the Senedd which attracted more than 10,000 signatures. In December 2025 the Senedd debated the petition, reflecting concern among politicians, clinicians and the public.
“Emergency departments are buckling under the strain of relentless demand and insufficient capacity, whilst unsafe practices, such as corridor care, are becoming normalised.”
The remark above was made by the Cabinet Minister for Health and Care, Mabon ap Gwynfor MS, in his first statement of priorities, underlining the Welsh Government’s recognition of the problem.
Data gaps hamper assessment and planning
Despite the high-profile petition and the RCEM snapshot, there is a notable absence of comprehensive, routinely collected data on corridor care in Wales. The RCEM survey covered only three days and therefore cannot be extrapolated to indicate how common corridor care is over longer periods, across seasons or during specific surge events such as winter pressures.
When asked previously about recording corridor care, the then Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care indicated that local health boards (LHBs) are responsible for capturing operational data on hospital capacity and numbers of patients where capacity is exceeded. Publicly available, standardised reporting on corridor care, however, does not appear to exist, leaving policymakers and frontline staff without a single authoritative measure to track progress.
Causes and consequences
Those campaigning against corridor care point to a combination of factors driving the practice: overcrowded emergency departments, prolonged waits on trolleys and chairs, and insufficient capacity across urgent and acute care pathways. Professional bodies describe corridor care as both unsafe and undignified for patients, and highly stressful for staff required to deliver care in non-clinical spaces.
- Clinical risk: corridors are not designed for privacy, infection control or continuous monitoring.
- Staff wellbeing: prolonged use of inappropriate spaces undermines morale and increases pressure on already stretched teams.
- System performance: corridor care is symptomatic of capacity and flow problems across hospitals and community services.
Policy options and limits of the evidence
Eradicating corridor care would require both short-term operational measures and long-term capacity planning. Short-term responses might include enhanced streaming in emergency departments, rapid discharge teams and flexible staffing; longer-term solutions could involve expanding bed capacity, improving social care and community pathways to reduce avoidable admissions, and investment in urgent care alternatives.
However, assessing which interventions work depends on better data. The three-day RCEM snapshot demonstrates that corridor care occurs across Wales but cannot establish trends, nor can it identify which hospitals or times of year are most affected. Without routine, standardised recording, it will be difficult for the Welsh Government and local health boards to set measurable targets, monitor progress or evaluate the impact of policy changes.
Campaigners and clinicians have called for the Welsh Government to require regular reporting on corridor care and for local health boards to publish operational metrics that capture the use of inappropriate clinical spaces. Such transparency would allow scrutiny and support evidence-led planning, but it would also need to be accompanied by resource commitments to address the underlying capacity shortfalls.
For now, corridor care remains a visible symptom of wider systemic pressures on the NHS in Wales. The snapshot survey, the petition and ministerial comments have raised the issue into the political spotlight, yet the absence of robust, continuous data limits understanding of how widespread corridor care truly is, and which measures are most likely to succeed in eradicating it.
