Residents at Cork nursing home left eating cold soup due to staffing shortages 

A lack of staffing in multiple areas left residents of a Cork nursing home eating cold soup and sitting around all morning with nothing to do.

HIQA conducted an unannounced inspection of Aperee Living Conna, home to 41 residents, in May, and found seven areas of non-compliance as well as two of substantial compliance and 10 marked compliant.

Overall, residents and visitors gave positive feedback on the kindness of staff. However, a small number of residents told the inspectors that staff were slow to answer call bells which impacted on their experience.

Repeated audits had identified that call bell response times were poor, but no action was taken to address this.

There were issues with food choices, with residents complaining that the soup served at lunchtime was cold and the choice for the evening meal was sandwiches, scones and yogurts, with no hot option available.

One of the chef positions for the centre had been vacant since January 2024 and from a review of rosters, an agency chef was rostered one to two days each week to address this gap.

Inspection

On the day of inspection, there was no chef available to cater for residents’ needs as the agency staff did not attend for duty, and residents confirmed that this had happened on more than one occasion. 

During the lunchtime meal, one resident who required assistance also wasn’t served their meal until almost an hour after other residents.

There were further staffing-related issues, with the inspector being informed that the activity co-ordinator was on annual leave, meaning there was no one assigned to activities in the morning. Though there was a sing-song with an external musician in the evening, ‘some residents spent long periods of the morning, sitting in the day room, with little stimulation or interaction,’ the report said.

There were fire safety issues — flammable rubbish found in cigarette bins and failure by the provider to ensure regular fire evacuation simulations were conducted despite ‘a turnover of staff in recent months and known fire risks in the centre.’ Though ceilings had been upgraded since a previous inspection and work was underway on a number of fire doors, there were no builders onsite and the person in charge was not aware why they were not there. Prior to the inspection, assurances had been provided to the chief inspector that builders were onsite completing the outstanding fire safety works.

Following inspection of the centre in November 2023, the provider’s compliance plan indicated that the proposed required fire works would be completed by February 28 , but while some action had been taken, ‘the majority of the required works remained outstanding, therefore the risk to residents remained.’

Action plan

A further time-bound action plan was submitted by the provider in April, indicating the works would be completed by May 31, but findings of this inspection show that this plan had yet to be implemented at the time of inspection.

The centre told HIQA that work was completed by builders in August of this year, and a new call bell system has been installed, with staff ‘educated to respond in a timely manner’ and regular audits continuing.

There are currently no vacancies, the centre added, explaining that a plan to replace the activities person when they go on annual leave is in place now, and a new chef has been recruited since the inspection providing a choice of hot food and evening meals.