Understaffed Shrewsbury nursing home told it must improve

Radbrook Nursing Home in Shrewsbury was visited by inspectors from the Care Quality Commission in August.

On their visit to the home, which cares for more than 40 people, some of whom are suffering from dementia, inspectors found that one resident was still waiting to be helped out of bed at lunchtime. Another was kept waiting for 50 minutes to be served their food and for others, their food went cold whilst they waited for help to eat. Inspectors said: “People and their relatives told us there was not always enough staff on duty at certain times of the day. One person said, ‘There’s not enough staff both night and day, it’s not the carers fault, there are just too few of them.’One relative said, ‘They could do with more staff, especially on a morning.’”

Records showed people and their relatives had raised concerns about staffing levels and response times through the provider’s complaints system and at residents’ meetings.

They added: “We could not be confident staff were effectively deployed to meet people’s individual needs and therefore effective in keeping people safe. This was a breach of regulation 18 (staffing) of the Health and Social Care Act 2008 (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014.

Committed

“Systems were in place to promote good standards of infection prevention and control. However, we found some areas of the service were lacking in good housekeeping standards. For example, armchairs and wheelchairs were dirty, tables not cleaned and tablecloths were stained.

“We found no evidence that people had been harmed. However, governance systems were not robust enough to ensure risks to people’s health, safety and welfare were being managed effectively.”

However, inspectors did find that medicines were stored, administered and destroyed correctly. They also found that while the home required improvement in being effective, safe, well led and responsive - all of which had been rated as good at a previous inspection, the staff were found to be very caring.

They said: “People told us staff were respectful and treated them with kindness. Comments included, ‘Staff are very kind, I can’t praise them enough’ and, ‘Staff are very good, there’s just not enough of them’. People were observed to be happy. When staff were present we saw positive and respectful interactions between them and people living at the home.”

A spokeswoman for Morris Care said: “For more than 30 years, Radbrook Nursing Home has enjoyed an excellent reputation, with good ratings across the professional sector. It is therefore with genuine disappointment that the recent CQC Inspection Report identified areas of provision requiring improvement.

“Morris Care remains totally committed to providing a high standard of care and is taking immediate and appropriate actions to ensure it redresses the issues raised by the CQC to regain its long standing ‘Good’ rating as soon as possible.”