NHS staff are avoiding eye contact with patients because they are “embarrassed” about how they are being treated in A&E departments, MPs heard today.

It comes as a new poll by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) found that half of emergency care doctors feel their department is “unsafe” for patients.

Giving evidence to MPs on the health and social care committee, RCEM president Dr Ian Higginson revealed data from emergency medicine clinical leaders from 80 emergency departments in England.

Half said their department was fairly or very unsafe, and 88 per cent said A&E overcrowding was a daily occurrence.

Some 30 per cent of new starters show active evidence of burnout.

Dr Higginson said staff often feel “left to fend for themselves, with poor engagement throughout the system, and they often feel unheard and unsupported.”

He described a conversation with a consultant friend, who said: “I love my job, I feel I’ve got so much to offer, I love emergency medicine, but I don’t think I can go back and do another shift, because I am embarrassed about what we are delivering.”

Royal College of Nursing (RCN) general secretary Professor Nicola Ranger said corridor care had “spilled out to wards,” telling MPs: “For many [nurses] that’s what they feel very ashamed about.

“When they know that someone is stuck by a nurse’s station, and there’s someone who needs to go to the toilet, or they’re dying, and they need a quiet space, and so that real sense of anger, shame.

“They’re losing hope. That’s why there’s got to be a sense of urgency on this.”

Asked about embarrassment among nursing staff, she said: “I was talking to a patient last week who said [nurses] feel embarrassed, so there’s a lack of eye contact.

“I think that’s a real symptom of many nurses not feeling proud of what they are doing.”

Prof Ranger raised concerns that organisations are already “playing off” the data on corridor care “to say whatever you want.”

She said: “People can game it now. I’ve been to a hospital where they were telling me the 45-minute handover delay ambulance was brilliant.

“What they didn’t tell me was there were five extra patients stuck on the ward in order to achieve that.”

Health minister Karin Smyth told the committee that the government was committed to putting a stop to corridor care by the end of this Parliament.