Royal Blackburn Hospital: 'My dad, 80, spent 36 hours on corridor trolley'

A woman has said she was "horrified" after her 80-year-old father with dementia spent 36 hours on a trolley in a hospital corridor after a fall.

Gail Myerscough said her dad, Brian, was taken by ambulance to Royal Blackburn Hospital's A&E department at about 14:00 GMT on Saturday.

She said dozens of patients were in the corridor with "no privacy or dignity".

East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said staff were "working as hard as they can to reduce waiting times".

Ms Myerscough said it was "very stressful and so upsetting" to see her father who is from Blackburn in a corridor and looking "so confused" and she had been left "traumatised".

"I've never seen anything like it; I was horrified," the illustrator, from Manchester, said.

She said she had to change him in the corridor.

"He had no privacy or dignity and he couldn't sleep because it was so busy and there was nowhere for us to sit," she said.

Ms Myerscough added that the patients "didn't get fed properly" and were only offered pre-packed sandwiches.

She said "several corridors" were filled with patients on trolleys who looked "in pain".

The 52-year-old said she was "really shocked" to see a sign on her father's trolley which read "corridor care" and felt it was "being normalised".

"Something has to be done," she added.

Patients were warned last week that wait times at the hospital's accident and emergency department were more than 12 hours, due to a "steep rise" in people attending.

The trust said it was facing one of its busiest winters.

Sharon Gilligan, deputy chief executive at ELHT, added: "It means the department is very crowded and many patients are having to wait over 12 hours which is not what any of us want."

Ms Myerscough praised the staff who tried to help her dad, saying she could not fault them, but felt the hospital was "under-staffed and under-resourced".

"The staff did everything they could under difficult circumstances," she said.

Ms Myerscough said she was relieved when her father was finally placed in a ward in the early hours of Monday.

Ms Gilligan, who is also chief operating officer at the trust, said everyone was "working as hard as they can to reduce waiting times".

Apologising to everyone "who finds themselves or their family waiting for long periods of time in our urgent or emergency care treatment centres", she said the A&E department was one of the busiest in England.

"We are regularly breaking records for the number of people who come in for treatment each week and this includes a lot of very poorly people who need to be admitted for further care," she said.

"Unfortunately when all cubicles are full with patients, it does mean we need to use corridor space.

"Please be assured that whilst patients are waiting for a bed, they are being cared for, reviewed, assessed and supported by colleagues and we provide hot and cold drinks, soup and sandwiches to them."

She said the team had shown "ongoing hard work and resilience" and could not be doing "any more to support patients and their families in an extremely pressured and challenged environment".

She added that people could help "by only attending urgent or emergency centres if you have medical needs that are life-threatening" and using the NHS 111 phoneline to be guided to the "most appropriate place for help, including GP surgeries and pharmacies".

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