2 designated centre’s for older people in Donegal have been found to be non-compliant or substantially complaint with regulations as part of a new HIQA report.
The Health Information and Quality Authority has identified area’s of irregularities including policies and procedures, the premises, fire safety and medicine management.
The Brentwood Manor Private Nursing Home on the Letterkenny road in Convoy in Donegal did not live up to certain regulations during an announced inspection on the 26th of November 2019.
The facility that can accommodate 48 residents have a number of twin bedrooms that did not ensure the privacy of residents due to poor furniture layout. There was also a lack of privacy screening around each of the bed spaces in these bedrooms.
As well as this, one of the single bedroom ensuite’s did not have a shower. There is a number of communal baths in the facility but no communal shower available to the resident residing in this room.
There was also a lack of floor space due to the size of the new furniture in one of the twin bedrooms.
And as for hygiene, the hairdressers room did not have a wash hand basin.
The Brentwood Manor Private Nursing Home has responded to the the findings and stated that the improvements have been made as off the 31st of January of this year.
Meanwhile, more than one issue cropped up during an inspection of the Falcarragh Community Hospital in Donegal on the 13th of December 2019.
The facility was found to only be substantially compliant with its written policies and procedures when it was discovered that not all of its policies had been reviewed after 3 years. One of these policies was the ‘end of life’ policy that had not been updated since 2015.
The facility was found to be NON compliant when it came to the layout and design of the facility under regulation 17. The premises is a single story building with two units. One of which was newly added to the original building.
The original building fell down on a number of aspects including walls that need to be painted due to old leak marks, chipped flooring and not providing enough storage space for cleaning equipment.
Other recommendations include; privacy locks being fitted on both doors entering a shared bathroom, changing the design and layout of multi-occupany rooms and making small lockable presses more accessible to patients.
HIQA has also requested for something to be done to the dining room – as it is used as a corridor to access residents bedrooms.
And finally Regulation 17 also found that the sluice facility had a window that opens onto the clean storage facility which HIQA believes, does not provide for safe infection control practises.
Fire precautions also came under fire as records showed a number of gaps in the weekly checks when the fire safety officer was absence – and that the fire procedure and evacuation plans where not up to date to include the new unit in the designated centre.
Although the centre did provide accurate evidence of a monthly fire drill, it did not however provide details of the area evacuated, the number evacuated and learning outcomes from the drill.
Regulation 29, which is Medicines and pharmaceutical services found that the hospital was only substantially compliant when is came to not consistently implementing the new medicine administration system.
The main issues related to:
> There being no difference between the medicine administered on a regular basis and medicine only to be administered when required.
> the route and time of administration was not consistently documented.
>and poor legibility of some handwritten prescriptions and the use of blue ink.
The Falcarragh Community Hospital has responded to HIQA’s requests outling that the recommendations will be or have been dealt with and will be forwarded to the most appropriate members of staff.
