Inspectors find 'confusion over patient pain relief' after visit to Wednesbury care home
Staff at a Wednesbury care home were found to be unclear whether patients required pain relief or not, inspectors found.
Medicines were not managed robustly at Wood Green Nursing Home and checks 'were not always effective in identifying issues, omissions or errors', a Care Quality Commission (CQC) report said.
The home in Wood Green Road is registered to look after 40 people. When CQC staff visited on June 15, there were 29 people staying there.
Read the report here
Staff were found to be caring and the recruitment process was 'robust' but the service was 'not consistently well led', the report says.
Audits and checks were not comprehensive and some were lacked analysis.
Management was sure that people working there were appropriate - but formal staff supervision was 'not always regularly undertaken and in line with the contract agreed with its employees' and end of life care was found to be 'lacking'.
Interaction with people was 'positive and caring' but activities at the home were 'limited and not always centred on people's interests'.
The CQC report said: "One record where discrepancies were found showed that no count of the boxed medicines had occurred on 19 out of the 21 days that medicines had been supplied to that person.
"One record we reviewed for a person who had recently been discharged from hospital was unclear in terms of whether the person should be receiving pain relief on a regular basis. Nursing staff told us that they had not given this medicine.
"However, we found that no pain assessments had been conducted for this person as was the providers' policy to support this clinical decision to determine pain levels."
The care home's director Tracey Plant said: "Obviously after receiving the report I did speak to the inspector and he said there were lots of good things. Everything has been addressed.
"Obviously we were a little disappointed. It was just a few minor things that need a little bit of attention. But a lot of them had been addressed before we even received the report."
The CQC last visited the care home in January 2015 and carried out a comprehensive inspection. It was found to be in breach of regulations after it was discovered they had failed to tell the CQC about incidents 'that had resulted in or had the potential to result in harm to a person using the service'.
But inspectors said the home had improved since their last visit and said they had noted the 'kind nature' of the staff'. People staying at the home were treated with dignity and carers 'respected people's right to privacy'.
