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.