TREATING  accident-and-emergency patients in hospital corridors due to overcrowding is becoming the “new norm,” nurses warned today.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said that A&E departments were under “intolerable pressure” due to a lack of beds.

In a survey of 1,100 RCN members in England, 73 per cent of nurses said that they provided daily care to patients in a non-designated treatment area such as a corridor.

Nine in 10 nurses said that safety was being compromised as a result, such as when administering urgent intravenous antibiotics.

The survey also found that the term “corridor nursing” is now used formally in the workplaces of 49 per cent of those polled.

And 90 per cent added that the frequency of caring for patients in non-clinical areas had increased since last winter.

RCN director for England Mike Adams said it was “completely unacceptable” that patients were being deprived of privacy because of a lack of access to toilet facilities while in corridors.

Labour shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth said that the increase in corridor nursing was a result of Tory government austerity, understaffing and cuts to NHS beds.

NHS England’s national medical director, Professor Stephen Powis, said that the government was investing extra money to help hospitals recruit staff — including 50,000 nurses — and cut waiting times.

He claimed that the RCN survey was a “self-selecting survey” that “does not give a reliable representation of nurses’ views.”

A&Es have had to treat more than a million extra patients over the past year, he added.