To find this revelation from an NHS carer shocking?

[Lizzie523]

I have a very vulnerable family member that I have not seen since covid. She is now in the late stages of alzheimers and have been starting to wonder if I will ever see her again.

Recently her carers had been visiting her whilst also going to look after a person with covid at the same time. Their highers up explicitly told them they must not inform us or other family members this was happening/the risk to her.

So far she has not caught covid but I dont feel confident about it not happening in future. AIBU to be beside myself with worry?

It's not acceptable & they should say if there are people they are treating who have covid. This doesn't breach data protection as some have suggested, as you aren't giving names. It's like a gp saying that they're treating someone who has cancer, they don't have to give personal details.
Also it doesn't surprise me at all that they were told not to tell you.

Get a grip we have covid pos patients in side rooms on covid neg wards. We wear our ppe and adhere to hand hygiene. People with covid still need looking after and you could change care package but it is highly likely there will be others on the books who are covid pos. Abuse and sound entitled AF

Had this with my mum when carer was telling her all about her mum being ill with covid and how she cares for her little boy. Whilst not divulging patient details it might be more reasonable to say have those positive patients at the end of your route the way MRSA positive patients would be taken last in the day for surgery for example. Any standard practices like this can be explained without discussing specific patients surely?
I hope your mum is okay, it's a horrible worrying time when you can't manage to do it yourself

• YABU and sound entitled AF

Truly shocking and a massive risk, fact. Any idiot on here saying your overestimating the risk clearly know nothing about nosocomial transmission or red and green pathways. Report to the care quality commission

People treating people with covid aren’t lepurs you know. They have lives and family’s and homes to go to as well! Jesus Christ it’s come to this.

What do you think the cqc will do?

@Thisistherhythmofthenight if that’s actually true you might want to read the recent cqc reports, because that’s against basic board assurance IPC and any hospital would get a serious warning notice. If that was true have to assume your in Kent who were most recently well publicised to be putting lives at risk. Just because you are doing something doesn’t make it right, or in this case against all current IPC recommendations

Unfortunately anyone who has carers or nurses visiting will be at risk as they are visiting patients who may have Covid

The care company wrong to say don’t say anything...... it makes it all abit cloak and dagger.

@Bythehairywartsonmywitchychin I find that so corrupt that anyone is told to switch off track and trace by employers. I think that's actionable. There is a lot of this practice going on and I do hope that when we get to "the Inquiry" that everyone expects, this practice will be exposed and all the people with Nuremberg defences along with it.
@baublesbaubleseverywhere I find your reply to that post saying it's fine to switch off T&T as you're wearing full PPE, as naive as someone believing a durex can stop pregnancy 100%.

The principle behind the PPE is treating everyone as if they're covid + so it shouldn't make any difference. The reason that staff whose colleagues test positive don't need to self isolate is because they're wearing PPE.
Any confidential patient information shouldn't be shared. You'd not be told if care workers were nursing people who were HIV+. Why would this be any different if they're taking all precautions?

@Plumbuddle well you better report the entire NHS, then. The whole point of PPE is to stop transmission. So why would I need to isolate following contact with a +ve client if I've been following full PHE guidelines?

@Sendintheclown why don't we read the CQC guidance before we report, eh?

www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-providing-home-care/coronavirus-covid-19-provision-of-home-care

There would be no staff to look after patients, if all of us have to isolate due to a covid patient.

The same as in care homes, that's why we are tested and wear ppe all the time we on shift.

(Or, @Plumbuddle, are you expecting staff to self isolate after every contact with a +ve client? Your wards and community would be devoid of staff pretty quick if that was the case).

@StephenBelafonte

OP now that you know this, what will you do to protect your relative? Will you provide the care yourself?

I think we should be very careful not to be confrontational to people who are not caring for dementia patients personally. It could be cruel. My mum had dementia and multiple falls at the end of her life (actually died of heart failure) some months before Covid hit. My sister gave up her job to live with her because she would not have understood going into a home but she could only afford to do that because her daughter is grown and she lives with two other adults all of them paying their mortgage. The rest of us had mum for weekends. There came a point that my sister could not lift her alone onto loos and such and plus the falls were too frequent to manage. Just physically, we had to relinquish her to a care home. There, she died in just two weeks partly because of the trauma of being placed there. I think if someone like you accused someone like my sister of not having cared enough when she cried at the appalling neglect that my mother received in that extremely expensive and posh home, I would be sickjened. Be careful what you say on threads like these.

It's a massive breach of confidentiality to tell you anything about another patient. How have you found out about the other patient?

We all stayed in that home virtually around the clock visiting my mum I hasten to add. I think we may have been one of the families that might have broken your record and removed our mum #StephenBelafonte rather than leave her with others in this crisis. But we're all working and partnered so could afford it. Many sadly cannot.

Well I hate to break it to you but it happens in hospitals too. There aren't enough staff to have a clean and dirty workforce so sometimes staff have to move between wards.
I am exposed to 26 patients in outpatients every week - close contact. Some of them may later turn out to be carrying covid, there's no way of knowing. All we can do is wear PPE and try our best to keep everyone as safe as we can.
As a pp said people with covid need care too. Would you prefer we refuse to care for them on the off chance we pass it on to someone else?

@Beyondridiculous wonder why this happens???? Covid wards overrun and itu/hdu overrun.
Cqc and the higher ups do not live in the real world. Everyone deserves treatment and drs, nurses, hcas, porters ,cleaners etc are trying to keep everyone safe and well.

It’s shocking that they were ordered not to tell you, yes.
To those talking about client/patient confidentiality, that’s not a valid reason to keep this information secret.
This line of argument is flawed. It would only violate confidentiality if it was revealed WHO exactly was suffering from Covid. Simply giving the general information that another (anonymous) patient was positive doesn’t breach anyone’s privacy.
Therefore the carer could have disclosed that she was seeing a Covid patient without a breach, so long as she didn’t disclose the identity of that patient.
As for PPE, unfortunately it is far from failsafe.
In this vein, my cousin’s mum is in a care home which didn't tell him she had Covid.
Some very high handed and disrespectful behaviour going on.

For me, it’s the not telling is the issue. You have done everything, including not seeing this vulnerable person, since the outbreak and you get wind that he/she is being cared for under a veil of lies. How can you trust their care is of a high standard?

Honesty is more important than ever since the pandemic broke out.

Maybe the staff have just been told in their training that they are not to discuss any client, their illness, their infections, their care needs with other patients or families which is completely right and that if asked they simply say they cannot discuss this.