Mental health watchdog voices 'serious concerns' about St Stephen's Hospital Glanmire

A string of inspections has highlighted fire safety problems and 'an atmosphere of tension and irritability among the residents'

Chief executive of the Mental Health Commission, John Farrelly, said: "Every inpatient service in the country knows only too well what they need to do to attain high standards." File picture: Jason Clarke.

The Inspector of Mental Health Services has "serious concerns" over a mental health unit in St Stephen’s Hospital in Cork city, after a report found the facility had been slow to address critical and high-risk non-compliances.

The hospital, located just north of the city near Glanmire, has recently been the subject of a string of inspections by the mental health watchdog. 

Issues outlined in those inspections included fire safety problems and a system of governance for Unit 3 at the facility described as "‘inexplicable". 

In the same unit, "residents displayed institutionalised behaviour, such as pacing and congregating outside the nurse’s office and on the corridor, and the inspectors noted an atmosphere of tension and irritability among the residents."

St Stephen’s Hospital has a total of 87 beds:

• Unit 4 is an admission unit; 
• Unit 2 is a 25-bedded unit providing care and treatment to those under the psychiatry of later life team; 
• Unit 3 contains 18 beds for male residents with severe and enduring mental illness; 
• Unit 8 has 25 beds and provides care to residents with enduring mental illness.

The hospital was inspected three times in less than 12 weeks, with some issues highlighted not addressed between inspections.

The Mental Health Commission queried why it was taking such intense scrutiny to  improve compliance with standards.

The Inspector of Mental Health Services, Dr Susan Finnerty, said: “It is clear from our annual inspection of St Stephen’s, and from both of our subsequent focused inspections of Unit 3, that we have serious concerns about the care and treatment of residents in this unit.

“While improvements have been made in some areas, it is deeply worrying that we still had to apply a high-risk non-compliance for the regulations on premises — and for the regulation on therapeutic services and programmes — at our second focused inspection." 

As an example, we identified a serious issue with fire doors at the annual inspection, which rendered them non-functioning. 

"At the second focused inspection almost 12 weeks later, this issue had still not been resolved. This is simply not acceptable,” Ms Finnerty said. 

Chief executive of the Mental Health Commission, John Farrelly, said: "Every inpatient service in the country knows only too well what they need to do to attain high standards across all the rules, regulations and codes of practice.

"When we point out serious issues at an annual inspection, the very least we would expect is that the service in question make immediate efforts to assure us that these issues are going to be addressed in the near future."

Following the annual inspection last Autumn seven conditions were attached to the centre, while issues in Unit 3 included "minimal staff presence in the ward area".

A focused inspection in Unit 3 was then carried out. It found that the unit was under the management of the North Lee services whereas the rest of the hospital operated under North Cork Mental Health Services.

The report said ligature points had not been minimised to the lowest practicable level, based on risk assessment, while a number of restrictive practices remained.

"MHC continue to closely monitor the arrangements which the HSE has put in place to bring the centre into compliance," it said.