Additional reporting by Sam Lennon
The partner of a man found close to death in woodland two days after disappearing from a crisis-hit hospital believes people in Kent have lost faith in the NHS.
Janet Pott, 73, has relived what she calls the “worst 44 hours of my life” as new figures expose record A&E delays that have left more patients than ever stranded in corridors.
Janet Pott was beside herself when her partner of more than 50 years, Nick Sheppard, vanished from the William Harvey Hospital. Picture: Barry Goodwin
The retired police worker had feared the worst when her partner of more than 50 years, 75-year-old Nick Sheppard, vanished from Ashford’s William Harvey after spending a day and a half on a trolley in a packed emergency department.
He went missing on the same day the hospital was forced to turn its coffee shop into a makeshift ward due to a severe shortage of beds.
Nick was eventually found in nearby woods 44 hours later, barely alive in a ditch he had tried desperately to scramble out of.
“With every hour that passed, I believed more and more that he was going to be found dead,” Janet said.
A bang to the head
The ordeal began when Nick collapsed at his local Co-op store in Dover at 1pm on Monday, September 15.
The retired maintenance man fell to the floor and hit his head, leaving him concussed and in a “pool of blood”.
Shop workers called 999 after Nick Sheppard fell and hit his head at the Co-op in Maxton, Dover. Picture: Janet Pott
Shop workers called 999 and Nick was taken to the A&E at William Harvey, where staples were used to treat a nasty cut to the back of his head.
He was then placed on a trolley in a busy corridor, where he would spend a sleepless night with Janet in a chair by his side as they waited for tests to be carried out on his heart.
At about 10pm the following day – 33 hours after arriving at the hospital – Janet says she put her head down on the trolley mattress and dozed off for the first time. When she was woken by someone trying to pass her in the narrow corridor, Nick had disappeared.
At first she thought he had gone to the toilet, but panic quickly set in when he could not be found.
“I just said, ‘Where’s Nick gone?’ And nobody knew,” she said. “Nobody.”
Alarm raised
While Janet says CCTV was not immediately checked, she understands it was later established Nick had left the building through a back gate at 10.06pm.
The police were called and specialist search and rescue teams were scrambled. A missing person appeal was also circulated in an attempt to locate Nick, who she believes wandered off in a state of concussion.
“The longer it went on, the worse it got,” Janet said. “I kept crying. I thought, if they find him dead, he died because I went to sleep.”
This CCTV image of Nick Sheppard was released by police as part of a missing person appealOn the day Nick Sheppard disappeared, patients were being treated on beds in the closed café branch at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford. Picture: Submitted.
Family members searched barns and outhouses in the area, believing Nick may have tried to seek warmth after becoming disorientated.
But it was not until just after 6pm on Thursday, September 17 – some 44 hours later – that he was eventually discovered by police in woods behind the hospital.
It is understood helicopters hovering overhead had been able to detect what little bodyheat he had remaining.
Janet remembers the call she received from a police officer after he was found.
“I just said to her, ‘Is he still alive? She said, ‘He is, Jan, but he’s really, really bad.’”
It is understood Nick had fallen into a ditch, with deep scratches to his body suggesting he had tried desperately to climb out before becoming too exhausted to move.
He was suffering from hypothermia and was severely dehydrated, having not had a drink for almost two days.
“He was so filthy,” Janet recalls of seeing him in hospital for the first time after.
Nick Sheppard’s scratched and bruised leg after falling into a ditch in nearby woods. Picture: Janet Pott
“His feet and legs were cut to bits and his clothes were ruined.
“They had a heater over him and a big yellow hat on his head. I can’t tell you the state he was in. It was dreadful to see.”
A fight for life
Nick spent the next 19 days in intensive care – most of the time heavily sedated – with Janet by his side.
He continued to suffer health complications, including kidney failure and a bleed on his bowel that required several blood transfusions, before eventually being moved to a ward, where he spent a further five weeks.
Janet says he has no memory of what occurred from the time he collapsed in the Co-op to when he left intensive care three weeks later.
The couple are now back home together in Dover, but Janet says Nick is “not how he was before”, with the prolonged ordeal – during which he lost four stone – leaving him struggling to walk and needing a catheter.
“He’s not quite the man he was before, when he was still fit and active,” she said.
“He went into hospital with a head injury. He didn’t have all these problems when he went in.”
Nick Sheppard still has a nasty scab from the original head injury he suffered in the Co-op. Picture: Barry Goodwin
Nick, who still has a large scab on his head from his fall, agrees, adding: “I’m 75 years of age and it’s the first time ever I’ve been in a hospital and not wanted to go back.
“I know they saved my life, but they shouldn’t have had to. It makes me so upset, how I am now. I used to be fit – now I walk like a hundred-year-old.”
A duty of care
Janet believes they would not have been put through the ordeal were it not for the extreme pressures on emergency care at the William Harvey.
“The minute anyone walks into that hospital, the trust has a duty of care to them,” she said.
“A vulnerable patient with a head injury should not be able to walk out unnoticed.
“If he was in a cubicle, or on a ward, this wouldn’t have happened, but instead we were crammed into a narrow corridor for hours on end.
“They just kept bringing more and more people in, to the point I said to a man in a lanyard, ‘Are you not going to declare an emergency and close the doors?’.
“It’s not the staff’s fault – they’re working as hard as they can – but it was like a warzone. It’s putting people off going to hospital – they’ve lost faith in the NHS, and so have I.”
Janet Pott made notes daily during partner Nick Sheppard’s stay at the William Harvey. Picture: Barry GoodwinNick Sheppard and Janet Pott, pictured in 1968, have been together for more than 50 years but never married. Picture: Janet Pott
“I’ve had people say to me, ‘I would rather die in my own bed at home than die in a corridor in that hospital’. And that’s an awful thing for people to think, isn’t it?
“I think there will be umpteen people that have died after an incident like this, but it won’t have been put down to the fact that it was corridor care, or lack of care.”
The East Kent Hospitals Trust says the incident is still being reviewed, but has apologised to Nick and his family.
“We have been working with them to further investigate what happened and how lessons can be learned,” a spokesperson said.
‘Trolley wait’ crisis
Corridor care refers to treatment given to patients stranded on trolleys in hospital walkways and other repurposed areas, typically while waiting for a bed on a ward.
So bad has the issue become, that, as KentOnline previously revealed, the William Harvey was forced to turn its cafe area into a repurposed ward – the very same day Nick disappeared.
The latest NHS figures reveal 2025 to have been the worst year on record in Kent for so-called “trolley waits” – a term used to describe a delay of 12 hours or more from the decision to admit a patient to them being given a bed.
A staggering 28,151 were recorded last year, compared to just 134 across the whole of 2019.
The number of 12-hour waits in Kent continues to rise, with more and more patients stranded in corridors
East Kent Hospitals, which runs the William Harvey, accounted for more than half of those, with its numbers among the highest in England.
The trust also runs the QEQM in Margate, where a “critical incident” was declared this week amid its struggles to cope with a spike in respiratory illnesses and norovirus.
Many wards have been shut off and patients have been told not to attend A&E unless their condition is life-threatening.
‘The most unbearable pain’
Dad-of-three Joshua Alexander is among those to have fallen victim to the pressures faced by staff at the Thanet hospital.
The 32-year-old mechanic was rushed to A&E by his partner, Lauren Gardner in the early hours of November 14, after being overwhelmed by stomach pain.
He claims he was then left lying on the floor of the emergency unit for almost six hours with his appendix “close to bursting”.
“It was probably one of the most unbearable pains I can describe,” he recalled.
“I was curled up in a ball on the hospital floor.
Joshua Alexander, of Margate, says he was left on a hospital floor for hours in agony
“Eventually, staff came and saw me and I told them that I needed pain relief. They offered me paracetamol, but I told them that was not going to help at all.
“After about an hour and 20 minutes of being in absolute agony, they came around and gave me morphine.
“I was then left to sleep on a dirty floor with no bedding – I was forgotten about.”
Mr Alexander says his appendix did eventually rupture during surgery to remove it the following day – a procedure he claims was delayed.
“I’d been told how bad my appendix was, that it was on the brink of bursting, so they needed to do emergency surgery,” he said.
“They told me how dangerous it was and that I could lose my life. You can die if you get a bad enough blood infection.
“But then they said the man who would put me to sleep for the operation had to leave to go to a London hospital.”
Mr Alexander, who runs ASR Garage in Manston, was eventually taken down for the operation late the following morning.
“Five hours later, I came out of surgery because my appendix burst inside me when they were operating. It was only supposed to last two hours,” he said.
Joshua Alexander doubled up in pain on the floor of the QEQM Hospital in Margate
Mr Alexander, a dad to girls aged six, 10 and 13, remained in hospital for the following three days and was off sick from work for four weeks.
“It was a horrible ordeal. Margate hospital is atrocious,” he said.
“I understand that they’re doing as much as they can there, but they’re really understaffed.
“The NHS needs more staffing and funding.
“People are going in with major things wrong with them, and they’re not getting the treatment they require straight away.”
Record numbers
The issues stem primarily from there not being enough beds available on hospital wards, with occupancy rates routinely at high levels.
The knock-on effect sees patients who need to be admitted from emergency units being left stranded on trolleys in corridors as they wait for a space to become free.
The number of 12-hour ‘trolley waits’ shines a light on how well a hospital’s emergency care service is performing. The picture in Kent, and nationally, is not reassuring.
East Kent’s total continues to rise, with its 12-hour waits among the highest in England12-hour waits more than trebled in Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells in 2025, with the 383 recorded in December making it the worst month on record12-hour waits rose by 123% in Dartford and GraveshamMedway continues to record thousands of 12-hour waits, but its total for 2025 fell by 11% – the only Kent trust not to suffer its highest ever year
East Kent – one of England’s largest trusts – recorded the most in the county last year, with 14,796, but the struggles are being felt across the county.
In Dartford and Gravesham, the number of 12-hour waits more than doubled to 3,675, while the 2,191 recorded in Maidstone was more than three times higher than in 2024.
The only Kent trust not to record its highest ever total was Medway, which dropped 11% to 7,489.
But great-grandmother Sandra Yeman, who in 2023 spent four days in a corridor at the Medway Maritime, says the lower statistics in the Towns are not cause for celebration.
“The yearly figure improving is a good start, but it’s all relative, isn’t it? There are still thousands of people waiting in corridors at the end of it all,” she said.
“If the other trusts are finding themselves under more pressure than before, could it be some patients are strategically choosing other hospitals, hoping it’ll be better than Medway?”
Delayed discharges
The struggles with ward space are largely caused by bed-blocking – when patients well enough to be discharged are kept in hospital because there is no suitable place for them to go.
Many are waiting for care home places or for social care packages to be arranged so they can return home safely.
The sight of patients lining the corridors at the William Harvey Hospital in Ashford has become commonplace
In September, KentOnline revealed the scale of bed-blocking across Kent, with some medically fit patients kept on wards for up to seven months after being declared well enough to be discharged.
Experts say an escalating crisis in social care, sparked in large part by a lack of capacity and staff, has seen bed-blocking spiral in recent years.
Others point to the knock-on effect of Covid, with more people turning up to hospital with conditions that have progressed much further because they avoided treatment during the pandemic lockdowns.
Ken Rogers, chairman of Campaign for Health in East Kent (Chek), recently called for the A&E at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital to be reopened to ease pressures in Ashford and Margate.
He says the critical incident being declared at the QEQM is a “stark indication of the intense pressure our NHS services are facing”. But he says the buck stops with national government and not those on the ground in Kent.
“It is important to be clear: the hospital trusts are not to blame for the current situation. Staff at every level are working tirelessly, often under extraordinary strain, to provide safe and compassionate care,” he said.
“Chek urges national leaders to recognise the challenges and act now to strengthen primary care and community support. Without urgent investment, the pressure on our hospitals will only intensify, and the public will continue to feel the consequences.”
An end to corridor care
The Royal College of Emergency Medicine says A&E units across the country are running on “desperation, frustration and exhaustion”.
Ashford MP Sojan Joseph raised the issues in the Commons this week, thanking Health Secretary Wes Streeting for acknowledging in a letter the efforts to reduce the pressures at the William Harvey by “employing more doctors, freeing up beds and accelerating hospital discharges”.
Ashford MP Sojan Joseph addressed the Health Secretary in the Commons. Picture: Parliament TV
But he added: “However, after 14 years of underinvestment, the corridor care has been normalised in part of the NHS. So what steps is the government taking to ensure it meets its commitment and we see an end to corridor care in the William Harvey Hospital?”
Mr Streeting responded: “I know it has been taken very seriously by NHS leaders nationally, as well as locally. We are seeing improvement, but there is so much more to do and we are determined to consign corridor care to the history books, not just in Ashford, but right across the country.”
Working hard to improve
Dr Des Holden, the acting chief executive of East Kent Hospitals, apologised to those who have faced long waits to be admitted to a ward.
“This is not the standard of care or experience we want for any of our patients, or for the staff who are treating them,” he added.
“We are continuing to work hard on improvements within our hospitals and with partners across the system. We are seeing the benefit of this work in how long patients who do stay for 12 hours then spend in the emergency department, and as a system we are focused on enabling patients who are well enough to go home to be discharged safely, freeing up beds for emergency admissions.”
Dr Holden says the Same Day Emergency Care units at the QEQM and William Harvey are being expanded to help reduce waiting times and hospital admissions.
A spokesperson for the NHS in Kent and Medway highlighted the increase strain on services during the winter months.
“To help relieve pressure, it’s important people use the right service and take up the offer of free vaccines if they are eligible,” they added.
“Please help us help you by choosing an alternative service if you have a less serious condition.”