Nursing home reports - Failures must be tackled with urgency
Elderly patients are still being kept in atrocious conditions.
One woman complained her mother was only allowed to use a commode twice a week by staff in a Co Meath facility due to the additional workload of hoisting the inmate onto the device.
It is wrong to refer to the resident of a nursing home as an inmate, but it is unfortunately appropriate in this instance.
In a Galway home, an elderly man was restrained by having a large table pushed up against his arms, pinning them in front of his chest.
Other nursing homes are plagued by a plethora of different concerns. In some the radiator and water temperatures are dangerously high. A resident in a Kildare nursing home received a burn on the arm from a radiator, while the hot water in a Mayo home was above the permitted temperature.
In another Meath home there were communication problems between foreign carers and the elderly residents. Inspectors from the Health Service Executive (HSE) found emergency fire exits were blocked in a number of homes.
A Galway nursing home has not been inspected since last year, even though the Health Minister gave a commitment that all homes would be inspected every six months. The HSE has stated there is a time lapse between carrying out inspections and posting the reports online. That should only take hours, not weeks or months, especially when the HSE is so overstaffed.
Reports on conditions in nine homes, mainly in the Dublin area, have been withheld from the public because owners dispute the inspection claims.
According to reports, elderly residents were regularly awakened in the middle of the night, or brought around in a state of undress, or housed in rooms containing rodent bait. The persistent lack of proper bandaging was a concern at a Cork home, where resultant swelling was affecting a resident’s circulation.
Some of the conditions are what one might expect in a Dickens novel. If animals were kept under such conditions animal rights activists would be outraged.
The community as a whole should be outraged about such conditions in nursing homes.
The HSE is pursing a district court case against one Wicklow home for breaches of care standards. But some nursing home owners have reacted angrily to HSE reports, which one owner claimed were “nitpicking” and a waste of taxpayers’ money.
Minister for Older People Máire Hoctor says the Government is supporting a policy to allow about 4,000 older people to live in their own homes, where they will receive nursing care and therapy. Up to €255 million has already been allocated for these services in 2007.
But such promises should not be allowed to obscure atrocious conditions in some homes. This should be tackled as a matter of extreme urgency because the residents do not have time on their side.
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