Patients face a daily fight for pillows at Oxford's John Radcliffe Hospital with nurses filling pillow cases with blankets to ease shortages.

Few patients had real pillows in the emergency ward yesterday - even though nurses are constantly ordering more.

One senior nurse said: "We never have enough pillows. We use blankets. At the moment we have got 19 patients and none of them have got pillows."

It is believed regulation NHS pillows go missing when patients are transferred. Nobody has accused patients of stealing them and pillows may even be stashed away in general wards.

Debbie Pearman, of the Royal College of Nursing, said: "There are shortages of everything - beds, blankets and pillows.

"We keep ordering pillows and they keep disappearing.

"In certain departments pillows move with the patients so perhaps somebody is stashing them in places where the patients end up, because they do not go back to their departments.""Where are all the pillows? I remember them having to borrow bed pillows from the nurses teaching area. "You have to roll up blankets to use as pillows. Nobody has come up with where the pillows go."

Genuine NHS pillows have become prized possessions, with nurses grabbing them from spare beds to give to patients.

Ms Pearman added: "It is frustrating for nurses when they want an extra pillow for a patient and there are none around, with people taking them from other beds."

The pillow crisis has been simmering for many months, coupled with the well-publicised shortages of beds and nurses. Extra beds have been promised for the hospital and managers are looking for new staff as far away as Australia.

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