18 December 2020
During an inspection looking at part of the service
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People and staff felt safe and all felt the service was a nice place. We found some shortfalls relating to staff not having a COVID risk assessment in place and no training for staff relating to COVID infection control and safeguarding training. However, following the inspection, the provider confirmed staff had received infection control training and there was a date sent for them to attend a safeguarding refresher training. They also confirmed risk assessments had been actioned following our inspection. All staff we spoke with had a good knowledge of both infection control procedures relating to managing COVID and identifying abuse and who they should report abuse too.
We inspected the service and were assured the service was managing infection control procedures relating to the risks of coronavirus and other infection outbreaks effectively. For example, we found personal protective equipment (PPE) was being worn as required, PPE was available for staff and staff knew how to use PPE correctly. Staff and visitors had access to hand hygiene such as hand sanitiser.
We found the following examples of good practice.
People supported to keep in touch with families. This had included outside visits and inside visits for those who were receiving end of life care.
There was a system in place to take people’s temperature on arrival and record contact details for test and tracing purposes.
Additional cleaning regimes were in place to ensure a high standard of cleanliness, paying particular attention to high touch areas such as door handles. The service was clean and odour free.
The provider was testing staff every week.
Why we inspected
We received concerns in relation to infection control procedures, staff recruitment systems within the service and poor governance systems. As a result, we undertook a targeted inspection to review the concerns raised within the key questions of Safe and well-led only.
We reviewed the information we held about the service. No areas of concern were identified in the other key questions. We therefore did not inspect them. We announced our inspection and requested information relating to infection prevention control policies, audits, contingency plans, staff training in infection control procedures and visiting policy during the COVID pandemic.
We found no evidence during this inspection that people were at risk of harm from these concerns.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for Mount Elton Nursing Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.