Make it easier to report complaints at nursing homes, says patients' group

The Patient and Client Council said any grievances should be investigated impartially.

It made the recommendations in a report entitled ‘The experience of living in a nursing home’.

The Patient and Client Council’s chief executive, Maeve Hully, said: “Care delivered in nursing homes is a significant and essential part of care for the frail and elderly in our society and people who live in nursing homes should feel safe and secure.

“Concerns about staffing, medication and health care are just some of the complaints we hear about from residents and their families.”

She continued: “Often people are reluctant to complain as they fear their care will be negatively impacted, or worse, that they will be asked to leave the home.

“People should feel confident to raise issues about their treatment and care and know that it will be thoroughly and impartially investigated. Furthermore, nursing home care providers should be able to demonstrate where changes have occurred as the result of a complaint.”

The report says nursing homes should implement a transparent complaints process that is in line with current standards set by the Department of Health. It also stresses the role health and social care trusts and commissioners of services have in ensuring that nursing homes are responding to complaints in a robust and timely way.

The Commissioner for Older People in Northern Ireland, Eddie Lynch, recently published the findings of a 16-month investigation into a home on the outskirts of Belfast, that found an “horrific catalogue of inhuman and degrading treatment.”
The investigation was carried out into Dunmurry Manor, a home that specialises in dementia.

The home’s operators, a company known as Runwood Homes, issued an apology following the publicaion of the investigation findings.