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Prime Time’s Miriam O’Callaghan spoke with families and nursing home residents about what life has been like with visitation restrictions in recent months.
There are over 32,000 residents in just over 500 nursing homes in Ireland.
Since March, there have been visit restrictions to protect them from Covid-19. While restrictions vary, inside visits are not allowed on levels 3-5 except for compassionate reasons.
Guidelines issued yesterday by the Center for Health Protection Surveillance, however, state that, as of December 7, nursing homes are advised to adopt a more flexible interpretation of “critical and compassionate circumstances.”
As such, nursing homes should facilitate compassionate visitation, even if a resident is not nearing the end of their life.
Under the new guidance, HPSC said a one-person visit per week should be facilitated for residents wishing to receive visitors in Levels 3 and 4.
Angela Coogan told RTÉ’s Prime Time that the ban on all nursing home visits was very difficult for her parents, especially her gregarious father, George.
“His family meant everything to him,” Angela said. “Then he would have had feelings of abandonment and not listening, not seeing, not spending time.”
Although George did not contract the virus, he passed away in April, something Angela attributes to his sense of isolation.
“He just got fed up. He just got, you know, he just had enough. And he just gave up and stopped eating and drinking and just lost his will. That’s what it was,” she said. .
“We believe he died from Covid. He didn’t have Covid, he didn’t receive Covid, but he died from the impact of Covid.”
Now Angela’s family is worried about Nancy, her mother.
“There’s no one there to play the music she loves … with mom, it’s about music too, because she was a singer in her father’s band when she was twenty. That’s how my dad met her.”
Her family holds a phone in the window so Nancy can listen to her favorite song.
“I just don’t want to see my mom fading and fading in the same way that dad did. I really don’t want to. And I’m terribly afraid of that happening.”
In September, geriatrician Prof. Rónán Collins attracted a lot of attention when he told Prime Time what his patients were telling him: that many older people felt that life was no longer worth living.
Speaking to Prime Time this week, Professor Collins said it was important to strike a balance between protecting vulnerable people from infection and ensuring that they have an adequate quality of life.
Noting that the HSE and the Department of Health had established an appropriate framework, he said that no one in a nursing home should be denied visits.
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