Emergency Rooms Are in Crisis — And Doctors Say Lives Are at Stake

A senior emergency doctor in England is raising the alarm about a serious crisis in hospital emergency rooms. Dr. Carole Gavin, who has worked in emergency medicine for more than 30 years, says patients are dying in hospital hallways because there are not enough beds. She is calling on the government to take action before more lives are lost.

Dr. Gavin says the situation inside emergency departments is both dangerous and deeply unfair to patients. People who are seriously ill are sometimes left waiting in corridors for up to 48 hours before they get a hospital bed. They have no privacy, and doctors say this kind of long wait can cause real harm — or even death.

Over the past few decades, emergency medicine has made huge advances. Doctors can now treat conditions like strokes and heart attacks that were once nearly impossible to help. But Dr. Gavin says that in 2026, England's hospitals cannot even provide basic, humane care to people who arrive in an emergency.

The government has said that NHS performance is improving because fewer patients are waiting more than four hours in the emergency room. But Dr. Gavin disagrees with how that number is being used. She says the patients who leave quickly are usually the ones who are not very sick, while the most seriously ill patients are the ones waiting the longest.

Dr. Gavin and other doctors say they have tried many times to warn leaders about this problem, but their concerns are not being heard. She believes the government is willing to accept these deaths, even though many of them could be prevented. She finds it hard to understand why a crisis this serious is being allowed to continue.

Fixing the problem will not be quick or cheap — it will take significant investment and effort. However, Dr. Gavin argues that if the government does not act, it must take responsibility for the deaths that follow. She and her colleagues say they will keep speaking out, even as they continue to see patients suffer every single day.