An A&E crisis engulfing Kent’s hospitals has left record numbers of patients facing so-called “corridor waits” of more than 12 hours.

Alarming figures show that close to 2,300 people who needed a bed on a ward last month experienced delays of at least half a day.

Among them was a man who slept on an emergency department floor during an agonising 45-hour wait to be admitted.

It comes as a leading doctor has branded it “societally unethical” to subject older patients to such long delays, while another fears “corridor care” is becoming routine.

But the pressure on Kent’s overwhelmed hospital staff shows little sign of easing, with more doctors’ strikes looming and winter driving an increase in flu and respiratory viruses.

Struggling most is East Kent Hospitals, which last month saw 1,168 patients waiting at least 12 hours for a bed - the seventh highest in England.

Meanwhile, just 45% of people attending its A&E departments were dealt with inside the target time of four hours.

Forklift driver Steven Wells fell victim to the crisis when, after vomiting blood, he was blue-lighted to the William Harvey in Ashford at 1am on Monday, November 13.

The 31-year-old from Faversham was not given a bed on a ward until 10pm the following day, forcing him to sleep on the floor of the emergency department.

He describes the ordeal as “horrendous”, and is not surprised to see his experience reflected in the latest damning data.

“It was honestly like a war zone at times,” he said.

“It makes me not want to go back to hospital, as the last time was so traumatic and embarrassing.

“You have people looking down on you, stepping over you and all you want is to just be looked after.

“I can definitely believe the stats, and it’s no surprise, but that doesn’t make it OK.

“They need more full-time proper staff in place. There’s no excuse at all for the way I was treated.

“If you’re in that much pain and discomfort they should find a bed for you anywhere.

“The demand is just overrunning that hospital - everyone from Canterbury and Faversham is being forced to Ashford, and it must be so overwhelming.”

East Kent Hospitals, which runs A&Es at the William Harvey and Margate’s QEQM, accounted for more than half of the 2,266 12-hour corridor waits in the county in November.

Medway Maritime in Gillingham, which last month was said to be overwhelmed as a video showed corridors lined with patients, recorded 766.

Elsewhere, there were 322 at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells and just 10 at Dartford and Gravesham.

One woman who knows only too well the trauma of such long delays is Sandra Yeman, 78, who is terrified of being admitted to hospital again after waiting four days for a bed at Medway Maritime earlier this year.

The great-grandmother-of-three, who has endured three spells in hospital since the Covid pandemic, said: “I really am frightened to go back again.

“I don’t want to be there for three or four days in absolute agony and nobody not being able to do anything about it.

“I was in an awful lot of pain and they didn’t seem as though they were doing a lot about it.

“[The latest statistics] don’t fill me with confidence, but it doesn’t actually surprise me because things really are getting worse – there are no improvements at all.”

Despite her concerns, the retired baker from Sittingbourne, who won an apology from the hospital’s chief executive for her ordeal, recognises the strain workers are under.

“The staff were mostly excellent, but they’re under so much pressure from the get-go,” she said.

“There are so many departments which really do need so much more help. I don’t know where to say to start with.

“We need more doctors, we need more nurses, but we also need more beds and more places for people.

“And to be honest, there are too many old people needing treatment and just not enough resources to go around – I remember when there used to be multiple hospitals in Rochester alone.

“I’ve paid my bit towards national insurance and tax over the years and all you want is to be seen promptly, but it just doesn’t feel like that happens for most people.”

The chief executive of the NHS, Amanda Pritchard, said on December 6 that last winter was the worst she had ever seen for the health service, warning that strikes by junior doctors later this month and in January will only make the situation harder for hospitals this year.

Meanwhile, Dr Adrian Boyle, the president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, says the scale of the corridor-wait crisis is “extremely concerning”, particularly for the elderly.

“I would go as far as to say it is societally unethical that we are subjecting our older people to these long stays,” he told the Independent.

A video taken at Medway Maritime Hospital last month

Dr Vicky Price, who is president-elect of the Society for Acute Medicine, added: “We have been warning of the dangers of corridor care almost all year, and the fact it has persisted for such a duration reflects that it is now perceived as routine practice – but it is unacceptable.

“It is not safe, particularly for older patients; it is degrading, and it is demoralising for staff.”

One of the primary causes of corridor waits is so-called “bed-blocking” - when patients no longer needing treatment are kept in hospital because there is no suitable place for them to go, such as a care home or specially adapted accommodation.

In the last week of November, 3,330 inpatients across Kent - excluding Medway - were considered well enough to be discharged, but just 1,583 were.

Nadra Ahmed, who chairs the Medway-based National Care Association, says ongoing recruitment problems in the sector are a major factor.

“We have still got the same issues because it is highly dependent on workforce,” she said.

“There are packages that can’t be put together by domiciliary care providers because they do not have the workforce.

“Every year we seem to be in the same place: every year winter seems to creep up on us; the sector is wholly ignored until it becomes a crisis.

“If you can’t maintain a sustainable sector, you are always going to have these problems.”

Kent County Council, which oversees social care in the region, and NHS Kent and Medway both say they are working hard to speed up discharges.

The latter says a “sustained increase” in patient numbers has heaped pressure on the county’s A&Es, with a spokesperson adding that lengthy delays are “never what we want”.

“We have projects in place to improve waiting times and are focusing on helping people leave hospital as soon as possible, allowing more patients to be admitted to beds,” they said.

Sarah Hayes – the chief nursing and midwifery officer at East Kent Hospitals – apologised to those who have experienced extended waits in A&E.

She said extensions of the emergency departments at the William Harvey and QEQM will provide an extra 21 “dedicated care spaces”, with the former completed last week and the latter set to finish next month.

She added: “We are also working to improve our discharge processes, and with NHS and social care partners, to maximise capacity both within the hospitals and in the community settings to enable patients to be discharged safely and quickly, and free up beds for patients needing to be admitted from the emergency department.”

Bed-blocking not only has a knock-on effect on A&E waiting times and admission delays, but also ambulance response times, with crews forced to wait outside as overcrowded wards hold up patient handovers.

During what was described as a “sustained period of significantly high demand” on Monday, disabled gran Tracey Mulhall was left lying on the ground for almost four hours until an ambulance arrived.

South East Coast Ambulance Service (SECAmb) apologised for the delay in reaching the 56-year-old, who had toppled off her mobility scooter in Westgate-on-Sea.

Meanwhile, a veteran GP in the county has responded to claims some people end up in A&E because they cannot secure an appointment at their local surgery.

Dr John Ribchester, an executive partner at the Whitstable Medical Practice, concedes that can be the case, but adds that some patients also go to GPs after failing to receive the desired response from hospital workers.

“There can be huge delay to see outpatients so people go back to their GP – there’s pressure in both ends of the system, which is a problem," he said.

“There’s been a backlog since Covid. GPs across Kent are offering many more appointments but demand is still often outstripping supply.

“It’s a very uncomfortable stat about the trolley waits - it’s not a situation any of us want to see.”

Dr Ribchester says the urgent treatment centre at Estuary View in Whitstable can sometimes treat as many as 200 people in a 12-hour day.

He says alongside this, figures for other clinics in east Kent show just how much pressure there is on NHS services.

But what can done to ease the strain?

“There are a lot of answers to that question – there’s not one simple answer,” said the GP of 48 years.

“First of all, trying to make sure everybody gets to the right part of the NHS first time and not to adopt the attitude on default of going into A&E for everything.

“Another thing that can help is recruiting more GPs and nurses into a general practice.

“Our lifestyle is our medicine in many cases and if we don't have the right lifestyle things can take a turn – it’s important to do the right things.”