WTAF... Did I just hear that??!!!

[Whattodowhattodooo]

Did George Eustice and Prof Dame Angela McLean admit to murder???

They just said that elderly WERE discharged to care homes whilst being asymptomatic in the "early days" Whilst we knew it was happening this is the first I've actually heard them admit to it.... They were in fucking hospital. Fucking test them you stupid fucking bastards 🤬🤬🤬🤬

@santana

@ChristmasCarcass wrote a detailed informed post clearly outlining things that went wrong, why they went wrong and suggesting how things could have been better. You're clearly just looking to goad. Not learn or constructively talk about stuff.

As for isolating people in care homes, a good many such people have dementia, and it would often be impossible to isolate them without causing massive distress - when they can’t understand or remember what is going on, or why.

@Floatyboat she made excuses. A right decision made at the wrong time is the wrong decision. One which has had catastrophic consequences. As for the "I'm sorry about your mum BUT" line...

Good post christmascarcass

This morning on GMB they played a daily briefing by Jenny Harries. They used it to highlight her saying it wasn't appropriate to test in community.

But something very important struck me taking her whole dialogue into context she said (paraphrased) that they who is the world health organisation and isn't tailored to and doesn't take into account the individual infrastructure of countries.' Then went on to say about our testing in hospitals for worst cases was appropriate.

I then translated that in hindsight to her saying at the time that basically we personally didn't have the capacity and so a decision was made based on what we had and what was appropriate with what we had?

At the time I didn't. Anyone else now hearing that with a different viewpoint knowing what we know now?

@Whattodowhattodooo I am so sorry about your grandma.

The NHS has made mistakes. PHE has made mistakes. There testing policy was laughably slow and rigid. I had patients in the community Feb that clearly had it but we couldn’t test and so they wouldnt isolate. The nhs covid assessment line using non existent 111 capacity was stupid. However I don’t think it’s murder.

As far as we knew in Feb/March the nhs was bracing for a pandemic that would overrun its capacity with people on the floors and in tents like we saw in China/Italy so at that point getting all the people that didn’t need hospital care, were symptom free and were at risk (so the frail elderly) out the the hospitals that were expected to become war zones ASAP seemed to be a very good idea. All the normal issues with discharge- which is mainly due to funding arguments were waved away so lots of people were discharged.

Care homes are people’s homes. Why would you make a seemingly healthy person stay in hospital rather than go home? Especially if there is a killer virus about to come to the hospital and there at risk I’m not sure that even if antigen testing was widely available it would have helped in asymptomatic cases as we still don’t know how well it picks up covid if you don’t have symptoms (and it’s wrong 30% of the times) so it may have just falsely reassured people. Possibly barrier care of the returned people for 14 days might have been a good idea, I don’t know how the nightingales could have been used for this, as how would you then decide if someone left there for the care home, they might have no symptoms but then be exposed on their last day of 14? For those with dementia it would be very distressing for them to be in a massive hospital like the nightingale rather than back in their (care)home. Maybe setting up new care homes for these people? But then they would infect each other and you would have the same situation or keeping people isolated in their rooms - also not sure if this is possible with dementia patients....

Lack of PPE in care homes and lack of training in how to barrier nurse is both The government and the homes fault. It’s got little do do with the nhs. Care homes are private businesses and like all private businesses they are responsible for surfing their staffs PPE and training them in how to use it. Clearly they couldn’t have prepared enough for a pandemic so the government should have planned for them to be supplied from the national stockpile a lot faster. Care workers also need to be paid more and better trained - again this comes down to the businesses and the prices paid by local councils. Elderly care in this country had been a disaster and a disgrace for a long time but the political and societal will to sort it out hasn’t been there - Theresa Mays plan to do something about it lost her her majority remember (and I’m not a mai fan, lifelong leftie), we can’t just blame government here, as a society we have underfunded, undervalued, undertrained and Ignored care homes for far to long and now we reap the consequences (although we’re so far doing better than Spain where I understand the care workers fled- our front line care workers are true hero’s who have stayed and cared)

Possibly barrier care of the returned people for 14 days might have been a good idea, I don’t know how the nightingales could have been used for this, as how would you then decide if someone left there for the care home, they might have no symptoms but then be exposed on their last day of 14?

This is the basis of barrier nursing and infection control. You isolate each patient so that there is no chance of cross infection. Seriously, has the NHS lost this knowledge? Have HCPs become complacent to this?

Do you think that some of us have never nurses patients with infectious diseases who also have dementia? If they had norovirus are they just left to wander around the care home spreading it everywhere?

Yes, it's challenging. Yes, it's difficult. Yes, it's manpower intensive. No, it's not impossible.

Come on, this is excusing real failures in care and in policy. People have died who didn't need to have died. That is a scandal.

Healthcare policy decisions when there are limited resources will mean difficult decisions that result in deaths for some groups to save others OP.

It is tragic and horrible and every individual affected is a loss.

If you can manage to do a better job and save everyone or more people with the resources and information available, please make a career change.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras

Sorry I didn’t make myself clear.

I think we agree that barrier care should have probably happened for 14 days in care homes for all discharges but these are not staffed by nurses, which is why I say care not nursing. Care home staff may well not be trained in this as the multiple norovirus etc outbreaks in these settings every year show us. Yes it shouldn’t happen but it does so for all care homes to manage to successfully isolate all returners for 14 days would be idealistic, as people have said above the level of care worker training is hugely variable. I worked as a both a care home hca and a home cater while I was in medical school and training was shockingly lax.

To add to that these are asymptomatic people so they are not sick and so confined to bed, some will be frail yes and so easier to isolate (but needing more care) but those with dementia are often mobile and not respecting requests to stay in their rooms. Maybe they should have been locked in.....that would have been a hard call to take at the time and would have met a lot of pushback

With regard to the nightingales these were built I believe as big rooms not isolation suites so barrier nursing would be very hard And people would have to be confined to bed area. How would one persuade a dementia patient to stay in bed? What will that do to their particular recovery that needs companionship etc. There is aIso the issue of the legality, under what basis how are these asymptomatic people without a confirmed exposure be required to be confined to bed/room/hospital? I don’t think this would be covered by the legislation as these people had not hat confirmed exposures and were not symptomatic.

I was assuming therefore what people were suggesting that the patients would be cohort nurses in the nightingales- like a 14 days stay to prove symptom free but then they would be exposed to other patients so it would be a bit pointless....

How could people be discharged to nightingales hospitals in oreperation for the pandemic overwhelming our ICUs and HDU's? They didn't exist at that time.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras I think I also said that it was a disgrace so I’m not sure why you think I’m excusing it.

Yes care in care homes should be better. It should have been better for years. My point was that covid has just highlighted (as if it needed highlighting more) just how rubbish much care is and that the government are responsible but so are we as a population. It had been said time and time again that care is in crisis, numerous scandals, undercover reporting etc but there had been no societal will to fix it. People won’t pay more for it, don’t want to pay privately (I had to sell granny’s house to pay for her care home sad face) and won’t pay more tax/NI to fund it (election looser) and don’t wish to care for their own elderly relatives in their homes.....no idea what the answer is now or what it should have been earlier. Couldn’t keep well asymptomatic patients in hospital For two more week as they would have been exposed there but also couldn’t discharge them as care homes couldn’t isolate, can’t send them all to the same place (like a new care home or nightingale or something) as then you just replicate the care home issue in a different setting.....I don’t know what the answer was

I agree that care in care homes should be better. I agree that they maybe didn't have the skills required but this was a national crisis. The government and PHE as well as the NHS were requisitioning beds in care homes and had waived certain criteria in order to discharge patients quickly, adequate barrier nursing and isolation should have been made a requirement.

It's not an excuse either to say care homes might not know about this. They should know about it. Don't tell.me they don't experience outbreaks of other infections - influenza and norovirus plus possibly c diff or MRSA from discharged hospital patients. There should be infection control policies in place or at least the ability to recognise the need to ask for advice.

People are just excusing bad management here. I trained as a nurse in the 1980s. We were all trained in infection control. If I visit a hospital now I am shocked by some of the lax standards that I see. It seems a level of complacency abounds around infection control. That leads to scenarios like this.

I don’t know what the answer was

I don’t know either but this is, unfortunately, not just unique to the UK.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/09/care-homes-across-globe-in-spotlight-over-covid-19-death-rates

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.euronews.com/amp/2020/04/17/coronavirus-care-homes-could-be-where-over-half-of-europe-s-covid-19-deaths-occur-says-new

My horrendous experience of working with the worst of NHS and PH management was that priority number 1 was how it looked to the outside, not patient care - hence the millions spent on legal fees and NDAs against staff who try to whistleblow.

When the crisis hit it seems to me the number one priority in these people's minds was how it looked rather than the reality. The government wanted no media pictures like Italy of people dying in field hospital tents. The senior people therefore applied some sort of tunnel vision to clear out hospitals in order to do the bidding of their masters with no thought as to the devastation that would cause. When the government constantly parrot that the NHS is not overwhelmed, they are saying this on the assurance of the NHS and PH seniors, when clearly this is bullcrap because the stopping of all other procedures and the infections of patients in hospital with CV does = overwhelmed. Whether or not there are pictures of people dying in field hospitals.

and agree with above poster that discharging ppl into care homes with serious infections is nothing new sadly. A severely disabled relative of mine had brief carehome stays when the family carers went on holiday and more than once came home with an infection such as MRSA or C Diff and then spent ages on horribly strong antibiotics to clear it.

yes Hearhoovesthinkzebras infection control has been an even worse issue now in some hospitals. People I know working in non medical allied professions in some North London Trusts were forcibly redeployed to medical wards to do HCA type work. They were given 2 hours infection control training, just 2 hours in a day packed with info too much to take in and remember!. I'm really not surprised that CV spread to non CV patients given the brief and slapdash training they were given, people who had never worked on wards and did not have a clue about what C Diff, MRSA is beyond it being a name on a piece of paper and they can spread between patients. I suspect there will also be more cases of the usual "superbugs" too.

@Wheresthebiffer2

"It is widely known isn't it. This happened. Elderly patients were discharged despite having symptoms, presumably not ill enough for requiring hospital care, and sent to the care homes untested."
But this isn't what the OP is saying George Eustice and Prof Dame Angela McLean admitted to. They were referring to people who were asymptomatic, as in they did not have symptoms:
"They just said that elderly WERE discharged to care homes whilst being asymptomatic in the "early days" "

OP, I am very sorry that your grandmother has died and you are, understandably, upset. It has been a very difficult situation for all countries' governments to deal with. Remember this a new disease, the tests had to be developed and then manufactured in vast quantities. They had to test those with symptoms first and, even now, people without symptoms in the general population aren't being tested.

Your grandmother was not expendable. None of the elderly are expendable. Govt ministers and MPs have parents too, some of who may be in care homes. It is just an extremely sad and tragic situation for everyone.

We too lost our grandmother in a care home a few weeks after losing our auntie both from COVID. One of the residents was discharged from hospital back into the care home and 3 residents passed away.

I actually don’t feel angry, I suppose I should, but I don’t. No one wanted this virus. With the best will in the world not every death is avoidable, particularly if there was no testing capacity. With no capacity decisions had to be made and care home residents were sitting ducks 😢

Saint Sturgeon has been doing this for a while now. Didn’t hear an outcry about her doing it

I think there has been a pretty big outcry in Scotland over care homes, especially the situation in Skye.

I wonder if some would be minimizing this so much if this was happening in childcare settings rather than care homes.

My local fb pages are full of people clapping and whooping for Sir Captain Tom Moore again now hes been knighted. The same people who were dismissive of the deaths in care homes.

The care home residents are really missing a trick here What they need to do to gain respect and adulation rather than being seen as bed blockers etc is to walk up and down the gardens of their care homes to raise money for the NHS (an organisation which is now a charity according to the MSM) Then perhaps they wont be seen as disposable.

OP im sorry for your loss

inews.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-latest-care-home-boss-authorities-pressure-residents-covid-19-litigation-cases-2859844

Coronavirus latest: Care home boss claims authorities pressured him into taking residents with Covid-19 as lawyers prepare for 'wave of litigation' cases
Exclusive: After patients were transferred from hospitals to care home, five residents died from coronavirus

By David Parsley
Wednesday, 20th May 2020, 5:56 pm

A care home boss has claimed that pressure from NHS Trusts meant he was forced to take two hospital patients into his homes, which led to nine residents contracting the virus and five deaths.

Despite requesting confirmation that both patients had tested negative for Covid-19, Andrew Winstanley, managing director of Berkley Care Group, said neither the CQC, which regulates health and social care in England, or Public Health England would provide negative test certificates

As a result, Mr Winstanley said, three residents died at his care home in Hillingdon, Middlesex, and two more succumbed to the virus in other homes across his group.

CQC said it is not within its remit its remit to provide Covid-19 test certificates.

Legal profession prepares for 'wave of claims'
The claim is made as medical negligence lawyers across the country are preparing for a “wave of litigations” as families who have lost loved ones in care homes begin to seek justice for mistakes that may have led to the spread of the virus among some of society’s most vulnerable people.

Mr Winstanley, who runs six homes across the south of England providing care for 330 residents, said: “We were pressured by NHS Trusts to take both residents without negative test certificates. We weren’t left with any choice but to take them when the NHS was trying to create bed capacity. After we took those residents in we had five
deaths.
A spokesman for the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said: “No care home should be forced to take back recovering Covid-19 patients if they do not feel they can provide the appropriate care. If a care home provider does not feel they can provide the appropriate care, that individual’s local authority should secure alternative appropriate accommodation and care for the remainder of the required isolation period.”

It is this kind of case which Carlos Lopez, a clinical negligence lawyer from Hampson Hughes, is certain will cause a “a wave of litigations” as families seek justice for loved ones who died from Covid-19 in such circumstances.

“It’s fair to say there will be a wave of litigation as a result of this health crisis,” said Mr Lopez. “We have been approached by one family already with a similar story, and it will come down to who’s to blame. We will look at the care home, the NHS Trust that discharged the patient, the CQC advice to care homes, and also Government guidance on the matter of transferring patients from hospitals to care homes. But if you ask me if someone is to blame, then yes.”
Inquiry into care home deaths 'inevitable'
Jocelyn Cockburn, a human rights expert and partner at legal firm Hodge Jones and Allen, said: “It is clear that the high level of deaths of residents and staff in care homes across the UK has raised major concerns in relation to the Government’s response to Covid-19 and possibly also the actions of specific privately or publicly run care homes. Whether there are individual claims or legal challenges by families of those who have lost their lives, will depend on the circumstances of each case. However, there is also a clear need for care home deaths to be investigated as a whole so that systemic failings can be identified, and the right lessons learned.”

Ms Cockburn believes calls in order to discover “the basis upon which decisions were taken and whether steps could have been taken to mitigate the risk of deaths”.

She added: “Article 2 of the Human Rights Act, imposes a duty on the state to protect the ‘right to life’ of its citizens it also requires an investigation to take place where there are arguable failings to do this. If as the Justice Secretary has suggested decisions were taken to protect the NHS in preference to care homes then this must be scrutinised especially in light of the vulnerability of care home residents and there are also questions as to the extent to which care homes were given the information and tools to protect their residents and staff in the face of the known risk to life.”

Care home boss blocked from taking new residents
Mr Winstanley also said one local authority in which he operates a care home informed him that he was not permitted to take on new residents until his home had passed risk assessment conducted by the council.

“We only found out about this by accident when a family told us they wanted to bring their family member from a hospital into one of our care homes. They said they had been told by their local authority that all new residents were blocked until after the risk assessment. I checked this, and it was confirmed. This is how we found out. No government body thought to tell care homes about this.

“The family is distraught as they believe their loved-one will now be forced to stay in a far more dangerous place, a hospital. I can see the point of view of the Government here, in protecting residents, but we need to know when the local authorities will be able to carry out risk assessments at our homes. I asked one and they just said ‘how long is a piece of string’.

Asked if the Government had directed local authorities to ban new residents in care homes before a risk assessment takes place the spokesman for the DHSC said: “These claims are completely untrue.”

Update 21-May at 7.45am: A previous version of this story said Berkley Care Group had been pressured by CQC into taking hospital patients into its homes without Covid-19 tests being performed. Berkley Group was, in fact, claiming it had been pressured by NHS Trusts. We apologise for any confusion caused

My gmil tester positive in hospital and was sent back to the nursing home with symptoms where she died.

I wouldn’t imagine that was an isolated case.

I flagged this up at the start. Yes I understand that in the early days mistakes were made. But C19 positive patients are still, to this day, being discharged into care homes and the community. There has been bullying to make care homes take them. I know because I have witnessed this. It is a disgrace.

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-nhs-trust-apologises-to-family-of-elderly-patient-whose-medical-records-were-altered-11992855

www.womensequality.org.uk/care_home_crisis?fbclid=IwAR2Tip4dK6lwwBq4kZ3dLliU9LQLRguLG3-GBb9z1tjrXaTwIjzXVwvtKQA

From the frontline of a care home
Home PassTheMic From the frontline of a care home
From the frontline of a care home
Anonymous, Care Home Assistant
From the frontline of a care home
Anonymous, Care Home Assistant

-----------------------

"The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed huge flaws within the care sector that predated the transmission of the deadly virus to the UK population. Flaws in the way that social care is run and funded and the government’s lack of consideration for the vital work care homes do have now been brought into sharp focus.

Personal Protective Equipment (or the lack of it) first made big news when it became clear the NHS’ supplies had depleted to unsafe levels. While the herculean effort to get restocked eventually saved numerous NHS workers from catching and spreading the virus, many care homes were completely overlooked. In the residential home I work in, my colleagues and I had to fight to convince the owners to even attempt to purchase the required PPE, because protective equipment costs money. By the time management realised the importance of adequate PPE, most of it had already been sent to NHS hospitals, so very little ever actually got through to us. This of course put staff and residents at risk of contracting the virus and we can see that now in the extraordinary number of deaths in care settings. The prospect of putting ourselves and our loved ones in danger against such a potent and invisible threat as Covid-19 was scary. I was angry too, as it really did feel as if we had been abandoned.

As we watched news of the virus spreading, new residents continued to arrive in the home; many from hospitals with confirmed Covid-19 cases looking to free up beds, while the care home was looking to make money. It wasn’t long then, before the virus got in and began to spread. Many of my colleagues were left with really difficult decisions to make. One colleague was told her child could not go into school again until she got tested, in case she had become infected by her care worker parent. Some colleagues feared they were developing symptoms, yet often continued to work shifts because they simply couldn’t afford to miss a day. If anyone suspected they had symptoms, the nearest testing centre was over an hour away by car, and that was if you could even get an appointment.

There was no safety net in place for us. PPE and proper testing for all frontline workers is vital, but still isn’t happening in care homes. The lack of proper employment protection exacerbates the situation further because if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. There’s no sick pay and you face the prospect of losing your job entirely if you self-isolate for 14 days, as instructed by the government. That people have to risk their own health and the health of others because they are worried about paying their rent is unacceptable and must change. That is why I am supporting the Women’s Equality Party’s social distance march this weekend.

My colleagues and I love the work we do and want to do the best job possible, but we often feel like our hands are tied behind our backs, and the reason is almost always down to profit margins. The private model instinctively makes cost savings wherever possible, to maximise profit in the care home; which leaves workers and residents alike feeling like the ‘Care’ is an optional extra. Years of underfunding from government exacerbates this
It’s galling because, in my experience, the staff try so hard and do an amazing job with a high level of skill (don’t get me started on the phrase ‘low skilled worker’!), for very little reward. All the while fighting against a lack of investment in care and a feeling that the great work we do is invisible. This ‘penny pinching’ means we’re often understaffed and so rarely have the time to talk to residents, to go above and beyond basic care needs and give residents the stimulation, fun and the comfort they require. Doing any more than just ticking off people’s basic needs means you fall behind on your rounds, so both residents and staff ultimately suffer. With proper funding, residents would lead richer lives, they would feel valued as humans; not just a room number to be dealt with before swiftly moving on.

Just one conversation with a resident is enough to know that they have all led extraordinary lives, worked hard and given so much to this country. They deserve to be treated better.

Frontline workers in the NHS do an amazing job and it’s good to see the public showing such appreciation for the work they do. However, this pandemic has shone a light on the care sector, how we on the frontline of this creaking system have been forgotten and yet how vital our work is. We too must be protected and valued, not just to stop the virus but as a vaccination against inequality."