Half of elderly care homes give people the wrong drugs
The Commission for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) found that thousands of elderly people in care homes are being given the wrong medicine, someone else's medicine or doses that are dangerous. Nearly half of all care homes in England fail to meet minimum standards for managing medicines prescribed by GPs, says the independent watchdog.
Staff, sometimes with a poor grasp of English, are poorly trained and records are badly kept. Private homes for the elderly perform nearly as badly as council ones.
More than 5,000 of 11,500 homes for people over 65 and more than 3,000 of nearly 8,000 homes for people aged 18 to 65 are failing to meet the minimum standards.
About 210,000 people in England live in the nursing and care homes that fail to meet the standards. Some have severe physical or learning disabilities or serious long-term illnesses and the medicine they receive can make a significant difference to their quality of life.
In one fairly typical case, a care home had a "pot pourri" of documents in its procedures file, resulting in "mixed messages" on when and how to administer medicines, the report says. In another "only two staff out of a team of 13 had training in first aid and one of those was off sick".
A diabetic resident's records stated that he should start insulin in May 2004 but by September it had still not been administered.
The report covers only England but a commission spokesman said: "I can't imagine that it is not happening elsewhere."
Two earlier, equally disturbing studies, suggested that elderly people were being given "a chemical cosh" of anti-psychotic drugs to make life easier for care home staff and that doctors were misdiagnosing elderly people with dementia by confusing the condition with the side-effects of many common medicines. Drugs used to treat allergies, depression, migraine and irritable bowel syndrome can produce dementia-like side-effects.
The report by the commission, an independent body that regulates almost all forms of residential and domiciliary care, is a follow-up to a 2004 report by its predecessor, the National Care Standards Commission. That identified "significant deficiencies" in the way homes managed medicines.
Improvements since 2004 have been "disappointingly slow", the new report says.
Campaigners for the elderly reacted angrily to the findings, saying that maltreatment of elderly people had gone on too long.
Gary FitzGerald, of the charity Action on Elder Abuse, said that if children were being treated as badly something would have been done by now.
"The last report was bad enough," he said. "This one is saying that there has been no change of any significance in two years and that is very, very worrying."
The Government appeared to be trying to pre-empt the commission's findings by announcing two initiatives to tackle abuse of the elderly.
Liam Byrne, the care services minister, will unveil plans today to register, train and vet 750,000 care workers looking after older people.
He will also announce a £600,000 research project with Comic Relief which will examine the prevalence of abuse of elderly people.
"Our retired citizens are a national asset and after a lifetime's work deserve the best care," he will say. "Any abuse of an older person is absolutely unacceptable."
A Government spokesman said Mr Byrne had decided that those who worked with the elderly "must become more professional to ensure public confidence".
The report is based on investigations into complaints by the public and spot checks and other inspections by the commission's inspectorate.
Dame Denise Platt, the commission chairman, said: "It is vital that all care homes treat this issue with the utmost seriousness."
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/07/ncare07.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/02/07/ixportaltop.html
Staff, sometimes with a poor grasp of English, are poorly trained and records are badly kept. Private homes for the elderly perform nearly as badly as council ones.
More than 5,000 of 11,500 homes for people over 65 and more than 3,000 of nearly 8,000 homes for people aged 18 to 65 are failing to meet the minimum standards.
About 210,000 people in England live in the nursing and care homes that fail to meet the standards. Some have severe physical or learning disabilities or serious long-term illnesses and the medicine they receive can make a significant difference to their quality of life.
In one fairly typical case, a care home had a "pot pourri" of documents in its procedures file, resulting in "mixed messages" on when and how to administer medicines, the report says. In another "only two staff out of a team of 13 had training in first aid and one of those was off sick".
A diabetic resident's records stated that he should start insulin in May 2004 but by September it had still not been administered.
The report covers only England but a commission spokesman said: "I can't imagine that it is not happening elsewhere."
Two earlier, equally disturbing studies, suggested that elderly people were being given "a chemical cosh" of anti-psychotic drugs to make life easier for care home staff and that doctors were misdiagnosing elderly people with dementia by confusing the condition with the side-effects of many common medicines. Drugs used to treat allergies, depression, migraine and irritable bowel syndrome can produce dementia-like side-effects.
The report by the commission, an independent body that regulates almost all forms of residential and domiciliary care, is a follow-up to a 2004 report by its predecessor, the National Care Standards Commission. That identified "significant deficiencies" in the way homes managed medicines.
Improvements since 2004 have been "disappointingly slow", the new report says.
Campaigners for the elderly reacted angrily to the findings, saying that maltreatment of elderly people had gone on too long.
Gary FitzGerald, of the charity Action on Elder Abuse, said that if children were being treated as badly something would have been done by now.
"The last report was bad enough," he said. "This one is saying that there has been no change of any significance in two years and that is very, very worrying."
The Government appeared to be trying to pre-empt the commission's findings by announcing two initiatives to tackle abuse of the elderly.
Liam Byrne, the care services minister, will unveil plans today to register, train and vet 750,000 care workers looking after older people.
He will also announce a £600,000 research project with Comic Relief which will examine the prevalence of abuse of elderly people.
"Our retired citizens are a national asset and after a lifetime's work deserve the best care," he will say. "Any abuse of an older person is absolutely unacceptable."
A Government spokesman said Mr Byrne had decided that those who worked with the elderly "must become more professional to ensure public confidence".
The report is based on investigations into complaints by the public and spot checks and other inspections by the commission's inspectorate.
Dame Denise Platt, the commission chairman, said: "It is vital that all care homes treat this issue with the utmost seriousness."
http://telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/07/ncare07.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/02/07/ixportaltop.html
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