Care home and community nurses 'anxious' over dangerous work

Nurses working in Scotland’s care homes are ‘anxious’ about the dangers the job now entails in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping through the sector.

Photography by Angus Forbes Theresa Fyffe RCN Scotland Director

Nurses working in Scotland’s care homes are ‘anxious’ about the dangers the job now entails in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping through the sector.

Theresa Fyffe, director of the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) in Scotland also spoke of the “enormous pressure” over staff shortages and infection control.

She said that potential new recruits to the industry are reluctant to work in care homes due to the extent of the problems.

Ms Fyffe’s warning came as it emerged that a quarter of coronavirus cases in Scotland were connected to care homes - figures showed 608 deaths last week.

While nurses working in hospitals and health boards had access to equipment supplies, those working in the community and in care homes were facing challenges, Ms Fyffe said.

She added: “I’ve had people say to me they don’t want to go there [care homes] and that’s because of the way it’s been handled. “If we get on top of it and treat the care homes in the special way we should have from the outset and say, you will be tested, you will have equipment and support to care for Covid-19 patients then we wouldn’t have that anxiety.

“When China concluded their situation they said the area that they did not pay enough attention to was primary care - in their case they were just talking about doctors but we did the same.

“We thought focus on hospitals and nurses, all because of the need for intensive care but we forget and didn’t pay enough attention to people who were saying ‘this is in the community, this is not just in hospitals’.

“I think that reality now is there - so I would say we just have to find a way to support these sectors so people are given the right care.

“It is unacceptable to think that they wouldn’t be getting that - we need to get the message out there that if you get the PPE right then nursing staff would be less anxious.”

Part of the concern over PPE was that every shift was different depending on what patients nurses had to see and this made it difficult to predict how much equipment they would need.

Ms Fyffe said: “The problem is with stock control - you just don’t know when you’re suddenly going to need more equipment.

“That means keeping up the equipment coming into Scotland and ensuring that it is delivered.”

Meanwhile, a key figure in the care home sector has criticised both the Scottish and UK Governments for treating care home staff and residents as 2nd class citizens.

Robert Kilgour, chairman of Renaissance Care, whose firm run 15 care homes across the country, said the sector was the new frontline in the struggle to get coronavirus under control.

He said: “The care home residents have been treated as 2nd class citizens and it’s just not right.

“They’re just as valuable members of society as you and I, so why shouldn’t they get the same treatment.

“I’m still not convinced the governments are going to be able to show the true figures - I don’t think they’ve got their act together on the data collection from care homes because they’re focus has been elsewhere.

“It takes time, Matt Hancock saying more tests are promised when capacity increases but they don’t have capacity.

“We’ve had 23 out of 1,100 staff tested in total and 10 have tested positive - we have 700 residents in total and seven of them have been tested with six positives.

“Two people who tested positive have sadly died and we have 13 further deaths that my nursing team suspect where coronavirus is fully or in part responsible - but we don’t see the death certificate.”