Emergency doctor says Scottish A&E care is already unsafe

• Dr Fiona Hunter, vice chair of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Scotland, says emergency departments are providing unsafe levels of care.
• She says some patients spend up to three days on trolley mattresses in corridors, designed for stays of up to four hours.
• The Royal College of Nursing says Scotland cannot establish the true scale of corridor care without a shared definition and routine reporting.
• Health Secretary Angela Constance says corridor care is unacceptable and has agreed that it needs to be measured, but has not set a timetable.

Hunter gave her warning on BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show on 11 October, describing departments crowded with ambulances and trolleys along corridors. She said staff were being asked to care for the equivalent of an extra ward’s patients without equivalent staffing, while crowded waiting rooms made it difficult to isolate sick patients. She also pointed to high staff sickness and burnout. Hunter said she did not want to scare people away from seeking emergency care. ¹

Her account of waits of up to three days was not tied to a named hospital, patient or date. The BBC report does not establish how often such waits occur, or whether the examples were from Scotland. Hunter’s wider warning is that corridor care has become routine and that emergency departments are already providing unsafe care before winter illness adds pressure. ¹

The measurement gap makes it difficult to check the scale of that problem. A Royal College of Nursing Scotland report published on 8 October says there is no single agreed definition of corridor care and health boards are not required to record and report incidents. The report draws on other indicators to identify possible drivers, including bed capacity, nursing shortages and delayed discharges; it says those indicators cannot be unequivocally linked to individual cases of corridor care. ²

In Parliament that day, Constance agreed that the practice should be measured and said a definition and workable method were needed. Asked when data would be collected and published, she said she was examining a proposed timeline and would return to the issue. The commitment is a step towards reporting, not a count already in place. ³

Constance also told the BBC programme that corridor care was unacceptable and said the government wanted to address the lack of statistics. She emphasised reducing avoidable hospital admissions and expanding care in the community. The BBC reported that it had asked the Scottish Government for a response to Hunter’s comments, which were broadcast after the minister’s interview. ¹

In Parliament, Constance said winter would be difficult and described plans to expand hospital-at-home services, with a target of more than 10,000 people benefiting this winter. Those plans sit alongside Hunter’s warning about current conditions: the figures needed to measure corridor care across Scotland are still being worked out. ³

Footnotes

1. BBC Scotland, “Emergency doctor ‘completely terrified’ of looming winter pressures on NHS”. ↩ ↩² ↩³

2. Royal College of Nursing Scotland, Key drivers of corridor care in Scotland. ↩

3. Scottish Parliament, Official Report, 8 October 2026. ↩ ↩²