A NURSING HOME has been told to change a bedroom that had four residents in it, despite being told in 2015 it could only hold three.

A HIQA inspection of a bedroom at Carysfort Nursing Home in Glenageary was carried out in January to see if a condition of registration had been complied with. The operators of the home had applied for the condition to be removed.

The condition said that bedroom number 7 in the facility be used to house no more than three residents. This was set out in the conditions of the home’s registration in 2015.

However, investigators found that four residents had been using the room.

The report, issued this week, found that:

“No efforts had been made to personalise any of the four bed spaces, although wall space was available by beds for this purpose. The centre of the room was the only floor space without any furniture and this area was used to access the doorway.

There was no television in the room. Two residents did not have access to a bedside locker by their bed as there was no floor space for a locker. This meant that they had no private storage unit within easy reach of their bed space for personal possessions.

The report says that two chairs in the room were not suitable for sitting on for long periods. It also raises issues with privacy in the room.

Three of the four residents living in the room did not have a sufficient amount of private space to undertake activities in private. They did not have enough private space behind their privacy screening to use a commode or sit on a chair in private.

“Nor did they have sufficient space to receive a visitor in private in their bedroom.

“Although there were two wash hand basins positioned side by side in the bedroom there was no screening around these wash hand basins and there was no lock on the bedroom door, therefore residents’ privacy could not be maintained when using either of the two wash hand basins if they wished to wash in the privacy of their room.”

The residents did have access to a bathroom across the hall and inspectors were told they spent most of their day on the ground floor of the home, taking part in activities.

The home management told HIQA that they had taken a literal interpretation of the condition.

Inspectors found that the layout of the room “continues to be unsuitable to meet the needs of four residents”.

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