Northampton care home '˜sometimes failed to fill out do not resuscitate information properly', report finds

Angela Grace Care Centre was inspected by the Care Quality Commission and the resultant report shows a number of concerns about record keeping​.

A line in the report, which gave an overall rating of ‘requires improvement’ said heart attack victims were at risk of not having their wishes carried out.

​It says: ​“People’s information, including information about their decision to be resuscitated in the event of a cardiac arrest, was not always accurately recorded.

“This was brought to the attention of the manager who had yet to implement a reliable system of recording people’s care needs to staff in handover.”

Other criticisms included that resident’s records had not been to hand when medics were called to the home more than once.

The report says: “There had been two incidents in September 2015 where nursing staff had not been able to find all the relevant information for ambulance crew in an emergency.”

Lastly, poor administration led to elderly residents who had fallen not being assessed properly for a full 24 hours.

The report said: “In November 2015 one person had a number of falls which had not been followed up by staff; they were taken to hospital with a serious injury two

days​n after the falls.

”People remained at risk of incurring injuries without this being detected as staff did not always follow the guidelines designed to detect this.”

A spokeswoman from Angela Grace Care Centre said the CQC report “makes clear that our residents’ care needs are properly assessed prior to admission and regularly and that we are a caring and responsive organisation and... effective at what we do”.

The spokeswoman also said: “In our professional opinion there were some significant inaccuracies in parts of the report and we have formally requested the CQC to undertake a review in order to set the record straight.”

She continued: “Our staff do assess the risk of falls and take appropriate action if and when a fall occurs. It is, of course, impossible to prevent all falls. But we do our utmost to protect the people in our care and seek advice from NHS specialists where necessary.”

“An independent safeguarding team who looked into a November 2015 case referred to in the recent CQC report found that our staff had acted appropriately and that the resident who had been hurt following a fall was referred for treatment as soon as the injury became evident. In other words, our systems for detecting injury are effective.”

She added: “We also have robust systems in place for ensuring that appropriate action is taken in the case of cardiac arrest cases and that this complies with the instructions of the individual’s own doctor and the wishes of their family.

“There is no possibility that we would refrain from resuscitating someone who requires resuscitation.”