Elderly people are left crying out in pain and routinely given the wrong drugs by staff at Britain’s care homes, a damning investigation has revealed. The Daily Mail reports:

One woman and her relatives learned that she had cancer only after asking staff what her drugs were for, it found. The investigation, compiled by Age UK and The Health Foundation, uncovers a shocking culture of neglect and mistreatment of care home residents. It comes after an expose at the Winterbourne View care home in Bristol revealed staff routinely assaulted and bullied patients.

The charities’ investigation revealed that staff were often so busy they couldn’t attend to patients and made mistakes as a result.

One relative of a care home resident said: ‘They [staff] were rushed off their feet... People were screaming out for their drugs, people with cancer, all sorts of really painful stuff going on. The nurses who should have been giving out the drugs were doing breakfasts.’

Others said staff did not have time to read crucial information about the medical and welfare needs of residents which could lead to mistakes.

Staff were often interrupted during complex drug rounds and many failed to pass on information about residents’ conditions to their families. The report follows research that found that each day, seven out of ten care home residents are the victims of drug errors.

Language barriers with workers who did not speak English well also led to communication problems, relatives said, especially when it came to medication. 

Others complained of understaffing and nurses drugging patients to keep them pliant.

Some staff gave patients sleeping pills during the day, leaving residents unsteady on their feet during the evenings.

Creams prescribed for one person were also shared, causing infections to spread between residents, the report found.

In one shocking account, the family of an elderly woman realised she had cancer only after asking what her drugs were for.

The report records: ‘When we visited the home one day we asked about some tablets which my mother was taking. We didn’t know what they were and why she was taking them – neither did she.

‘We were told they were important, they were part of the chemotherapy. We said: “What chemotherapy?” ‘The nurse said: “The chemotherapy for the cancer.” We said: “What cancer?”’

One woman was repeatedly given codeine despite warnings on her medical records that the drug made her very ill – on one occasion so seriously she had to be rushed to hospital. Another resident who was supposed to have paracetamol daily was instead given a high-risk drug when her regular nurse was on holiday.

Neil Duncan-Jordan, from the National Pensioners Convention, said the failings reflected a wider system in crisis, with some elderly people in care homes treated worse than animals.

He said: ‘The accounts are gut-wrenching. You would think in the 21st century, that we would have moved so far beyond this. 

‘When you have a system that has badly paid, poorly trained staff administering to the most vulnerable and dependent people in our society, those are the ingredients for a  system to fail.

Source: Daily Mail