The Director of a local healthcare group says many nursing homes are in crisis due to low staffing levels.
Sandra Farrell of Ormond Healthcare, which runs Patterson’s Nursing Home in Roscrea, says she’s been voluntarily on-call for the last 24 hours and feels staffing at nursing homes has been overlooked by the HSE.
She’s appealing for the immediate recruitment of nurses and carers, and says that some staff have even left the front line to take the temporarily increased Covid-19 welfare payment.
Ms Farrell has also spoken out about the death of a resident in hospital due to Covid-19:
“When you have management wiped out, carers wiped out. Then you have to voluntarily come in and look after people. I’m a nurse for 20 years and I’ve never seen things this bad.
“Yesterday I had to break the news to a 90-year-old gentleman to tell him his brother had passed away in A&E from Covid-19. I cried on the phone with him. This is the situation at the moment.”
Ms Farrell has also claimed that the increased Covid-19 welfare payment has proven an incentive for some staff to step away from the frontline:
“Everyone was saying that the Government pay of €350 per week when out of work was a great incentive. Unfortunately there are some staff members that see that incentive to go on sick leave from nursing homes and leave the frontline.”
