I heard an alarming report on the radio yesterday about the deaths over the last two weeks of six vulnerable elderly people in Nazareth House, a private nursing home at Fahan, near Buncrana, Co Donegal. The cause of death was influenza. Eleven of the remaining 39 residents were still being treated for symptoms yesterday and doctors remained concerned about a small number because of their frailty. The last person died on Monday. The home is run by The Sisters of Nazareth, an order of nuns. It transpires the HSE was not informed of this tragedy until Sunday.
So we have a private nursing home with severely compromised people dying in droves and nothing was done until last-minute. HSE infection control nurses have since been transferred to the home and inspectors from the Health Information and Quality Authority have also arrived.
Influenza is a debilitating and unrelenting illness. People like to say they have flu sometimes when they have a heavy cold– itself an unpleasant experience; but the two are nothing alike. I’ve had flu once in my entire life, indeed Gamma and I contracted it at the same time and even though it was over twenty years ago I have never forgotten how ill it made me. How weak I was, how delirious and fevered. I was a robust child, yet it floored me with the greatest of ease. Gamma, being elderly, took a significetly longer time to recover.
I have not doubt the Sisters are devastated over the deaths of their charges, but it is inconceivable to me that the HSE was not called in immediately when vulnerable people were starting to suffer from this insidious disease. Quarantine, medical expertise, all might have helped stall this rampant virus and saved some lives. More troubling we also learn that “It also emerged yesterday that a new resident was admitted to the home on Saturday and that the remains of one of the residents, who died of flu, was reposed at home on Thursday.”
How logical is it that a nursing home admit a patient when all around them their charges are sick and dying from a virus?
I’m not blaming the nuns, this is a tragedy. But vulnerable elderly people deserve to be protected at their end of days. The HSE needs to be involved with private nursing homes, they must be. There needs to be a code of practice in place, open, understandable and more importantly implemented to the letter.
I feel fierce sorry for those who died and those who are ill and for the families of these elderly victims. I hope lessons are learned and I really hope this never happens again.
April 4, 2012 at 11:23 am |
I agree that the HSE should be involved, especially when it comes to crisis care. That’s the worry for privatisation of health services, there’s no watchdog at all when things go wrong and it’s down to the people in charge to pick up the phone. That said, it occurred to me that maybe the good Sisters were hoping prayer would eliminate the need for the higher authority of the HSE…
April 4, 2012 at 11:35 am |
That cannot be the case surely. Those poor people, I don’t know why exactly but I aways get incensed by the idea of old folk suffering at all. They deserve better.
April 4, 2012 at 12:25 pm |
Much of my grievance here is with the gp. Why didn’t he tell the nuns to segregate infected patients and why did he not raise the alarm after he attended to the second patient. The nuns probably thought they were doing all the needed to when they called the gp. I do think there should be clear guidelines as to what measures should be taken when an infectious virus is evident. And I think an independent group such as hiqa should carry out random and frequent inspections of all health facilitates public and private. As to the hse involvement in running private homes, that would be a disaster. They can’t manage what the have, look at the state of the hospitals, the shocking amount of people misdiagnosed, on waiting lists and lying on trollys. I only know of two public nursing homes ran by the hse, the shit hole in crooksling and the respite one in harolds cross. While both are dreary run down old building with very little to nurture and entertain the deserving elderly, crooksling is the stuff nightmare are made of. Its been a few years since I’ve visited but it be a cold day in hell before any of my family are put in there. Now whilst Im normally critical of the hse and its ability to piss money away, I have no quams with their current idiotic approch to nursing homes. You see their aren’t many public nursing homes left, which is a bad thing for the exchequer but a good thing for the elderly. Given the hse will piss the money away lining greedy consultants pockets I can live with it. Unknown to most but the majority of private nursing homes are state funded. The enjoy generous tax incentives and when the hse can’t put you in a public nursing home, which is most often the case, you go to a private one. You sacrifice 80% of your pension along with 15% of the value of your home and the state pay the rest. In a public nursing home you sacrifice all your pension, 15% of your homes value and any savings over 15k in your Bank. If the use have their spoon in their it will be goodbye to the likes of amazing nursing homes like TLC and to pensioners hanging onto a few quid and hello mad house.
April 4, 2012 at 1:03 pm |
Agree with you about the GP, cannot fathom the thinking behind no quarantine once it was suspected to be flu. I wish people realised how dangerous real flu is.
April 4, 2012 at 12:56 pm |
I wonder about the flu vaccine? Were any of these elderly people vaccinated, because they should have been.
My Mam is an older lady and around every November when she’s in the doctor’s for her arthritis medication, he whips out the jab and gives it to her.
Surely elderly people in a nursing home should have been given this as a priority?
That’s an aside though, I guess.
Awful story, those poor people, feel very sorry for them. Sounds like lots of little things went wrong, procedures not followed, that sort of thing.
Some sort of independent body to inspect nursing homes, public and private, is sorely n eeded.
April 4, 2012 at 1:01 pm |
Apparently a number of them were vaccinated, but not against this particular strain, which is rather frightening when you think about a rapid mutating virus.
August 22, 2012 at 10:35 am |
This was an absolutely devastating event and certainly raises the question of how elderly care will develop in the future. Although there’s no questioning the diligent work of many health care workers (my own aunt successfully ran a home for the elderly for almost 30 years, despite not having any formal qualifications), many families may be pressed to seek senior care and elderly care alternatives in the future; such as domestic care or other types care in an individuals own home.