Hospitals are suffering serious shortages of vital medical equipment such as ventilators, pumps to administer drugs, and oxygen cylinders during the NHS’s ongoing winter crisis, the Guardian can reveal.

The surge in numbers of people needing care has also led to some hospitals running out of beds for patients to sleep in, mattresses to lie on and trolleys to use while they wait for admission.

NHS England has said the service is under the most strain it has faced since the 1990s. Patients have faced long waits for beds on trolleys in overcrowded hospitals, more than 100,000 patients have been stuck in ambulances waiting to get into an A&E unit, and senior doctors have written to Theresa May warning that patients have been “dying prematurely” in hospital corridors.



For example, Southmead hospital in Bristol has recently faced shortages of equipment including syringe drivers – which staff use to give drugs to dying patients – drip stands, infusion pumps – which ensure patients receive correct doses of fluids and medication – oxygen cylinders, and pressure-relieving mattresses, which help to prevent bed sores.

Internal emails show that supply problems recently prompted the hospital’s chief executive, Andrea Young, to warn staff about a severe shortage of face masks, which help limit the spread of infections such as flu. “Please only issue surgical masks to patients as a flu precaution,” she urged.

Staff should also not let patients take a walking frame home with them when they are discharged because “we are running very low on stock levels”.

A nurse at the hospital said: “The last few weeks have been ridiculous. At weekends, there is often a waiting list to get a pressure-relieving mattress. Nurses who bring patients up to the wards are taking pillows from under patients’ heads because we literally don’t have a pillow to give them back. Pillows are like gold dust.

“Staff can spend ridiculous amounts of time searching for equipment and medication,” the nurse added. “Patient care is undoubtedly affected by all of this.”

The NHS’s winter crisis has forced many hospitals to open makeshift extra wards, known as “escalation areas”, leaving some short of equipment.

A senior doctor at the Royal Aintree hospital in Liverpool said: “Our main equipment shortages have been physical beds for patients to be cared for on wards, and the trolleys used in A&Es to see and treat patients. We’ve run out of both of these at times recently.

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“When escalation areas are opened at short notice it literally is a scrabble around to find kit and supplies to open a ‘pop-up’ ward area, so equipment shortages will and do occur.”

Staff at Mid Cheshire hospital trust, which runs hospitals in Crewe and Northwich, have disclosed that it has also recently faced acute shortages of beds, lockers, drug trolleys, drip stands and infusion pumps. “Trust bosses have had to take action to get additional supplies in but we’ve not run out of anything yet,” one said.

Doctors’ and nurses’ leaders voiced alarm at the revelations.

“I’ve heard from several colleagues in acute medicine that their trusts have significant shortages of essential equipment such as bilevel positive airway [BiPaP] ventilators, which are needed in this surge of respiratory illness and IT kit – computers – on extra-capacity wards needed to complete patient records and proceed with [giving] care,” said Dr Nick Scriven, the president of the Society for Acute Medicine.

“I have also heard about a lack of basic items on extra wards such as blood tubes and cannulae, as well as beds, pillows and bedsheets. When staff have to urgently re-open areas [as temporary wards] and there is literally no kit then there is a panic procurement.”

Scriven added that one hospital has had to urgently hire extra ventilators as a result of the recent spike in flu and that another ran out of reagents used for testing flu swabs. The worst flu outbreak since 2010-11 has seen up to 758 Britons a week hospitalised for emergency treatment and as many as 240 people a week admitted to an intensive care or high dependency unit.

Janet Davies, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “We know that hospitals are constantly short of beds. But the idea that some are dangerously low, or are even running out of vital medical equipment like ventilators and oxygen cylinders would horrify the public.

“At the other end of the scale, hospitals should not be struggling to get hold of enough pillows and face masks, which are hardly luxury items.”

Scriven said the “financial pressures” facing hospitals as responsible for the shortages. But some trust managers said that “lean procurement” policies relating to equipment and supplies had left them badly prepared for this winter’s spike in demand.

The Department of Health and Social care said that hospitals should be able to cope with the extra demands of winter. A spokesperson said: “As part of its thorough and robust planning for winter, which was supported by an extra £437m in government funding, the NHS should have sufficient supplies to deal with periods of increased demand. If there are shortages, national NHS organisations are ready to work with hospitals to ensure a steady supply as patients would expect.”





The Guardian has asked NHS England and NHS Supply Chain to respond to the reports of shortages, but neither had replied by the time of publication.