Corridor care is no longer a crisis response, it’s a governance failure

The publication of On the Frontline of the UK’s Corridor Care Crisis by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) should mark a turning point in how corridor care is understood, governed, and addressed.

This is not simply a story about pressure, winter escalation, or demand outstripping capacity. It is a story about system design, governance visibility, and moral injury, and the growing gap between regulatory intent and lived reality.

The evidence now available makes one thing unambiguous: Corridor care is no longer an emergency measure. It has become a normalised operating condition. And that changes everything.

In this blog, Dr Richard Dune examines what the RCN evidence really tells us about corridor care, not as a temporary pressure response, but as a governance, safety, and workforce failure. It explores the regulatory implications, the impact on patients and staff, and the critical questions boards, leaders, and system partners must now confront.

From escalation to embedded practice

The RCN’s survey gathered testimony from 5,408 nursing staff across all four UK nations, spanning emergency departments, acute wards, assessment units, mental health settings, and older people’s services.

The consistency of the accounts is striking. Regardless of geography or speciality, nurses describe:

• Patients receiving care in corridors, waiting rooms, cupboards, and ambulances

• Inability to monitor deteriorating patients

• Compromised dignity, privacy, and infection control

• Repeated exposure to unsafe, ethically distressing situations. 

What is most concerning is not the existence of corridor care per se, but its normalisation.

Follow-up RCN publications show that corridor spaces are now being physically adapted with call bells, plug sockets, and monitoring equipment. This is not crisis improvisation; it is unofficial service redesign without governance scrutiny. As the RCN analysis makes clear, this represents a shift from "temporary escalation" to a de facto care model.

When dignity breaches become patient safety failures

Initially, corridor care was mainly framed as a dignity issue. That framing no longer holds. The cumulative evidence now documents:

• Undetected patient deterioration and deaths

• Cardiac arrests managed in non-clinical spaces

• Choking incidents without immediate response

• Mental health self-harm risk in unsafe environments

• Increased infection transmission, pressure damage, and deconditioning. 

This matters because, in governance and legal terms, harm is now foreseeable, repeated, and documented.

At that point, the threshold moves from "pressure" to system-enabled harm. And that places corridor care squarely within the scope of statutory duties and regulatory enforcement.

The regulatory standards are being breached routinely

Although the RCN report is not written in regulatory language, its findings map directly onto CQC Fundamental Standards. In practice, corridor care conflicts with:

• Regulation 9 - Person-centred care

• Regulation 10 - Dignity and respect

• Regulation 12 - Safe care and treatment

• Regulation 15 - Premises and equipment

• Regulation 18 - Staffing. 

The key governance point is this: Normalisation removes the defence of unpredictability. Once corridor care is routine, boards can no longer rely on the argument that risks were exceptional, unavoidable, or unknown.

Moral injury: The workforce impact we are still underestimating

Perhaps the most significant contribution of the RCN evidence is its articulation of moral injury. This goes beyond burnout. Nurses describe:

• Knowing care is unsafe, but having no alternative

• Fear of professional accountability and the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) referral

• Ethical distress from repeatedly violating their own standards

• Anxiety, insomnia, pre-shift dread, and emotional withdrawal. 

This is not simply a well-being issue. It is a workforce sustainability and governance risk. Persistent moral injury accelerates:

• Sickness absence

• Retention failure

• Defensive practice

• Fitness-to-practise exposure. 

And critically, it increases organisational liability for psychological harm.

What the NMC response does, and does not, resolve

The NMC’s response is carefully calibrated. It explicitly states that corridor care environments are unacceptable and unsafe, and reassures registrants that contextual pressures will be taken into account in fitness-to-practise decisions.

However, it stops short of offering operational clarity. There is no explicit guidance on:

• When escalation becomes mandatory

• What documentation thresholds apply

• How registrants should protect themselves when standards cannot be met. 

The implicit message is clear: Context will be considered, but documentation and escalation remain essential. From a governance perspective, this places a renewed duty on employers to provide clear escalation routes, risk assessment processes, and assurance mechanisms.

The HSSIB intervention changes the status of the issue

The intervention of the Health Services Safety Investigations Body (HSSIB) is a decisive moment.

Once a national safety investigation body confirms:

• Year-round use of corridor care

• Absence of consistent definitions or data

• Inability to quantify harm

…the issue moves beyond political debate into a formal patient safety failure. At that point:

• "Learning" alone is insufficient

• Mitigation without redesign becomes indefensible

• Continued tolerance becomes an accountability issue. 

Board accountability: The questions that now matter

Taken together, the RCN evidence, HSSIB findings, and professional regulator responses raise unavoidable board-level questions:

• How is corridor care being identified, recorded, and escalated?

• Are Datix and incident systems triggering systemic intervention, or normalising risk?

• Who authorises temporary care environments, and on what risk basis?

• What assurance does the board have that fundamental standards are being met?

Crucially, the absence of data is no longer neutral. Failure to collect, analyse, and publish corridor care data is itself a patient safety risk.

Public consent has collapsed

YouGov polling cited in the RCN follow-up material shows:

• 18% of UK adults have witnessed corridor care

• 37% of those accessing care have experienced it

• 88% say tackling unsafe care is an urgent priority. 

This matters because it removes any argument that corridor care is hidden, tolerated, or understood by the public. The legitimacy gap is now explicit.

Why is it not just an NHS problem

Although corridor care is most visible in acute hospitals, its drivers sit across the system:

• Delayed discharge due to social care capacity

• Insufficient community provision

• Inadequate mental health crisis alternatives

• Workforce shortages across sectors.

As the NHS England guidance now acknowledges, corridor care must be eliminated, not managed, but elimination requires system redesign, not local heroics.

From compliance theatre to governance maturity

What this evidence exposes is a deeper issue: fragmented governance. Many organisations can demonstrate:

• Policies

• Training completion

• Escalation protocols. 

But cannot demonstrate:

• Real-time risk visibility

• System-level learning

• Board-level assurance that unsafe care is not routine. 

This is the difference between compliance theatre and governance maturity. And it is precisely where many systems are now failing.

What must happen next?

This body of evidence demands more than acknowledgement. At a minimum, it requires:

• Mandatory national data collection on corridor care and inappropriate care environments

• Explicit regulatory positioning that corridor care is an unacceptable practice

• Board-level accountability for dignity, safety, and staffing failures

• System-level redesign, not seasonal mitigation.

Given the RCN analysis, this report is a red flag, not a solution.

Conclusion

Corridor care is no longer a sign of strain. It is evidence of system failure. The longer it is tolerated, the greater the risk, not only to patients but also to staff, boards, and the legitimacy of the system itself.

Governance, at its core, is about learning, visibility, and accountability, not fear or blame. And right now, the system is being tested on all three.

Strengthening governance, visibility, and workforce assurance

At The Mandatory Training Group, as a leading provider of training and compliance. and governance solutions in the UK and globally. We work with providers to translate regulatory intent into operational reality, particularly where workforce capability, risk visibility, and governance assurance intersect.

This is supported by ComplyPlus™, our regulatory compliance management system, which together enables organisations to move beyond paper compliance and into live, evidence-based governance.

Our work focuses on:

• Making risk visible, not normalised

• Supporting workforce escalation and documentation

• Translating regulatory standards into practical assurance

• Strengthening learning systems, not compliance rituals. 

Further details on our credentials are available via the CPD Certification Service, reflecting the standards applied across our work with health and social care providers in the UK.

This matters because sustainable improvement does not come from slogans or winter plans. It comes from system-level sense-making, honest data, and mature governance.

References

• The Royal College of Nursing (2026) - On the frontline of the UK’s corridor care crisis. 

• Nursing & Midwifery Council (2026) - NMC responds to RCN report on nurses providing corridor care. 

• Health Services Safety Investigations Body (2026) - Patient care in temporary care environments.