The Royal Free Hospital

FRONTLINE NHS staff have made a desperate appeal for resources after a dead patient was “forgotten about” in a hospital’s emergency department for 16 hours.

The corpse had been moved into a private room attached to the Royal Free A&E but was left there in a “horrible oversight”, sources say.

The New Journal understands the death was recorded around 11pm on Thursday, but the body was not attended to or taken down to the morgue until 5pm the following day.

“Such is the pressure on A&E staff that in a horrible, horrible oversight the dignity of a dead patient was forgotten,” the Pond Street hospital insider said.

“What’s shocking about what happened is that staff completely forgot about the dead patient and that the decaying body was left in the viewing room for 16 hours.

“As the body wasn’t prepared, there was a stench when whoever found it went in. It’s kicked up a bit of a fuss in the department.”

The New Journal understands porters were not called by nursing teams to the “viewing room” – a private space where loved ones can pay last respects following fatalities – that adjoins the “resus” section of A&E.

Resus is a unit where patients are taken when they are in need or immediate life-saving treatment.

The source said: “The viewing room can only be accessed by a staff card. But loved ones of those in resus were inches away from a decaying corpse.”

Day teams may not have been informed a patient had died during the evening shift, a potential consequence of the pressures of working in a stretched department.

Dead patients are usually covered in linen cloth or placed under tarpaulin by nurses, before being taken to the morgue by the porters to fill out the appropriate paperwork.

The New Journal understands the process is usually carried out within a maximum of four hours, and staff cannot remember a body ever having been left anything like this long without being attended.

“We’re so desperate for bays that a dead person has been forgotten about,” they added.

A Royal Free London spokesperson said: “We can confirm that the trust has launched an investigation into this incident.

“This is a deeply distressing event and all circumstances related to the care of this patient after their death have been immediately reviewed.”

Last November, we reported on the Royal Free London inviting its own staff to quit after it was forced into a “rapid acceleration” of cuts.

The “mutually agreed resignation” packages were launched following an eye-watering demand from central government for the hospital trust to make £120million “efficiencies” by April.

Managers had said they were aiming to axe more than 600 staff across the trust’s three hospital sites, while “stricter recruitment controls” were imposed along with restrictions on use of agency staff.

Meanwhile, the Pond Street hospital’s maternity and neonatal service is expected to be shut down later this year following a cost-cutting review by north London NHS leaders.