Investigation shows dire practices at privately-run nursing homes 

The investigation will likely lead to renewed calls for Ireland to enact an adult safeguarding law. Picture: RTÉ Investigates 

Residents at two privately-run Irish nursing homes were left to sit in their own urine and subjected to manhandling by staff, among many other abuses, a bombshell new investigation shows.

RTÉ Investigates will tonight broadcast Inside Ireland’s Nursing Homes, the result of a months-long undercover investigation at two nursing homes — The Residence in Portlaoise and Beneavin Manor in north Dublin City. The programme details a litany of questionable behaviour and practices, including:

• A resident with mobility challenges being left on their own in a bathroom;
• A man being refused a toilet break for 25 minutes due to chronic understaffing;
• A frail female resident with dementia, considered a serious fall risk, being left alone on the edge of her bed for several minutes at night while confused and agitated and seeking a toilet break;
• A man repeatedly being left sitting in an unchanged incontinence pad despite still being able to use a toilet and having requests to do so denied;
• ‘Fake’ lists of activities created for residents’ logs in order to show their time as occupied by pursuits, when the sole activity noted for residents was watching television.

The cost for a resident staying at the two homes in question is €1,320 and €1,514 per week.

The investigation will likely lead to renewed calls for Ireland to enact an adult safeguarding law — which was promised after a similar scandal at the Leas Cross nursing home in north Dublin in 2005, but which has never introduced.

The investigation also found that understaffing is endemic at the two homes, which are run by French corporate Emeis. It has been the subject of similar scandals in France in the past five years. The undercover investigation shows one staff member typically assigned to care for more than 20 residents at a time, particularly at night.

This means that residents cannot be brought to the bathroom or taken outside for exercise and are typically confined to one overcrowded room.

The scene involving the frail female dementia payment is particularly distressing — with the lady in question calling for help for several minutes before finally being attended to by a nurse.

Another shows a healthcare assistant declaring that “these bells are driving me mad” as assistance bells ring out across a corridor in the Portlaoise home, with no staff available to answer them.

Staff are informed that if all incontinence pads in their itinerary are used, they will have to make do with “what’s there”. A nurse is heard on camera objecting to this practice, noting that “incorrect incontinence wear is a form of abuse”.

The practice of ‘double-padding’ — placing two incontinence pads on a person in order to double the amount of moisture to be collected, which can lead to pressure sores — is also depicted in detail.

The investigation also shows multiple staff at the two homes ignoring care plans indicating that frail residents should only be moved using hoists, with manual handling forbidden. Instead, staff are seen moving residents by gripping them under their arms or by their trouser belts.

Neither Emeis nor the Health Information and Quality Authority (Hiqa) had replied to a request for comment at the time of publication.

Hiqa had repeatedly inspected the two homes featured in recent years.

The most recent inspection of the Portlaoise home found that the institution was “short-staffed”, with some residents who were at a high risk of malnutrition.

Emeis told RTÉ that the evidence of poor care standards, handling care plans being ignored, and the lack of dignity afforded to residents is “deeply distressing”, adding that it “does not tolerate any individual or systemic neglect or practices”.

Addressing the evidence uncovered by the investigators, David Robinson, a consultant geriatrician at St James Hospital in Dublin, said the situation is “about abuse”. “There is no other word for it, really,” he said.

“This is going to shorten people’s lives and the lives that they have will be more miserable because of the situation that they’re in,” said Prof Robinson.