RESIDENTS at a Malvern care home have not had their medicines ‘administered and stored in a safe way’, an inspection report has stated.
Management staff at The Chace Rest Home in Upper Welland has been told it must make improvements for the second successive time by the Care Quality Commission.
The report, which can be read online, follows an unnanounced inspection of the premises which took place between February 19 and 22 this year. The accommodation provides care for up to 41 people.
But inspectors found the home to be guilty of breaching regulations for not having medicines stored in a safe way.
Examples of this included a lack of hand washing by staff, a ‘potential’ missed medication time and instances when there was no water provided at medication times.
The report reads: “People did not have their medicines administered and stored in a safe way.
“This is a breach of regulation 12 of the Health and Social Care Act (Regulated Activities) Regulations 2014 because the registered person had not ensured the safe management of medicines.”
It then adds: “Hand washing by staff had not been performed prior to commencing medication administration, this is important to people’s safety to prevent cross infections.
“We saw a member of staff use one medicine pot for more than one person and touched the medication with their bare hand.
“We saw one person potentially risk missing their medication because staff recorded it as given although it was still in the medication pack. We had to remind the member of staff to give it to the person.
“We noted there was no water available for the person receiving their medication.
“The provider’s own medicine policy was not consistently followed, it stated staff should ‘use oral syringes with bottle stoppers to dispense small volumes’. However we saw liquid medications were measured on a spoon, instead of the appropriate pot with measurements for accuracy.”
The report also said there were areas of documentation which were not signed and charts were not always kept up to date – an issue being treated as a matter of urgency by the home’s management team.
However the inspection report also praised the care home for having good procedures in place stating that staff demonstrated a ‘good understanding’ of how to safeguard people from abuse and had ‘effective’ recruitment and selection processes.
For the grading of criteria, ‘Is the service effective?’ inspectors judged it to be ‘good’.
But the home’s overall rating was judged to be ‘Requires Improvement’, which was the same judgement given following its previous inspection twelve months ago.
The Observer approached the care home but management staff refused to comment on the report.
