Southmead Hospital bosses has apologised after a social distancing oversight saw staff crowd together in close proximity to visitors.
Tony Scrase said he and his wife found it "really scary" to get caught up in the group in the atrium on Tuesday (May 12), after he took her into the hospital for cancer treatment.
North Bristol NHS Trust, which runs the hospital, said staff had been marking International Nurses' Day and had been invited to collect a gift bag from the atrium as a thank you for their hard work.
A senior nurse has now offered her "sincere apologies" and said in hindsight the gifts should have been distributed in various locations to avoid people meeting in one place at the same time.
Mr Scrase, who lives in Sea Mills near Bristol, said: "My wife has been shielding for the past seven weeks, and this was the one place she should have expected to feel safe.
"I have nothing but admiration for the difficult job they do - a job I couldn’t do. But what I saw beggars belief.
"There were at least 40-50 staff milling around with no social distancing whatsoever.
"We had to wait for an extra 10 minutes to make sure it was safe for us to leave."
The crowd was outside one of the hospital's branches of Costa, which is often frequented by patients and visitors as well as staff.
Although hospital staff are not expected to be socially distant from colleagues or patients, as this is not possible on the wards, the two-metre rule applies when it comes to members of the public in communal areas like the atrium.
Mr Scrase said he has since had a phone call from the hospital trust's director of nursing, and said he felt senior staff had taken his concerns seriously.
What the hospital trust has said
In a statement shared with Bristol Live , director of nursing Helen Blanchard said: "We are so sorry that on the day when we were celebrating International Nurse’s Day the way we distributed a gift for staff in our atrium led to a number of staff breaching the social distancing we are normally so strict on.
"The event was to thank nurses for their tremendous work at this challenging and unprecedented time.
"Learning from what happened, we accept shouldn’t have had all the gift bags in one place and we didn’t give nurses sufficient time to collect them in an orderly manner.
"I want to offer a sincere apology for the upset this has caused and will make sure it doesn’t happen again."
The hospital has banned visitors during the coronavirus pandemic but there are some exceptions, including if a patient is particularly vulnerable.
