Home care workers in the UK were “under constant pressure” from the NHS to take coronavirus-positive and untested patients, while nurses were instructed not to resuscitate them, a new study has revealed.
In a study whose main findings were first published by the Independent, the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) examined nurses and managers working in 163 care homes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
Staff at 70 care homes, 43 per cent of those surveyed, said they received patients who were discharged from hospitals not tested for Covid-19 during March and April, when the outbreak first hit the country and peak. A fifth of nursing homes said they received patients who tested positive.
The investigation revealed that in some cases serious sick patents were brought into the hospitals, even when the houses warned that they were unable to care for them. One nurse reported “Constant pressure to admit people who were Covid-positive.” Another species said that “The acute sector has driven us to take untested permission.”
The two weeks of daily deaths during an outbreak were possibly the two worst weeks of my 35-year nursing career.
Staff reported that hospitals were instructing them to change the status of all residents accordingly “Do not resuscitate.” One nurse said such guidelines would do that “Automatic” applies to all suspected or confirmed Covid-19 patients. Some of the nurses surveyed said they refused to comply and interpreted the instructions as “Unethical.”
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At the same time, nursing homes were told that hospitals had a blanket “Not allowed” policy at the height of the outbreak.
QNI Chief Executive Crystal Oldman told the paper that the alarming findings were “symbolic” of how the government and the NHS viewed the care home system.
We were really surprised to see this. These are universal health care services. It is completely opposite of the protective ring around nursing homes that was talked about at the time.
Nearly 19,400 residents of care home died of Covid-19 in England and Wales between March 2 and June 12, according to the latest government data. The gruesome statistics were linked to multiple reports of nursing home staff struggling to obtain vital protective equipment, such as masks and gloves.
The death toll in the healthcare sector has drawn constant criticism from the government, with Labor leader Keir Starmer citing the failure to protect nursing homes “A national shame.”
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Prime Minister Boris Johnson said last month that he was taking over “Full responsibility for what happened,” but claimed that the government at the time had done everything it could. He said the situation in the healthcare sector was exacerbated by the fact that “Nobody knew during this pandemic … that the virus was transmitted asymptomatically from person to person.”
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