A&E Consultant Says She Is Terrified of the Scottish Winter
Dr Fiona Hunter, vice chair of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine in Scotland, says she is “completely terrified” about the coming months and that emergency care is at “unsafe” levels, with some patients spending 72 hours on trolleys in hospital corridors. She describes a “toxic normalisation” of corridor care “which can lead to patients dying”.
The health secretary Angela Constance vowed in August to eradicate corridor care. Speaking to the same programme she said winter would be “difficult” and repeated that corridor care is unacceptable, setting out three priorities: reducing avoidable admissions including through what she called robust public messaging, fixing the absence of statistics on corridor care, and moving to year-round winter planning rather than seasonal scrambling. One point of fairness belongs in the copy rather than a footnote: she was interviewed before Dr Hunter’s remarks were broadcast, so this is not a reply to them. That second priority is quietly the most revealing. Scotland does not currently collect figures on how many patients are treated in corridors, which means the practice that the health secretary has promised to eradicate is one the government cannot presently measure. Running underneath all of it is structural upheaval: the first minister John Swinney last month confirmed plans to cut mainland health boards from eleven to two. A reader in Scotland facing an emergency department this winter is therefore being told three things at once — that the situation is unsafe, that it is unacceptable, and that nobody yet counts it.