A care worker was sacked over choking fears at an Angus residential home, it has emerged.
Inspectors found a resident of Montrose Nursing Home was being fed a normal diet despite being diagnosed with swallowing difficulties.
The “extremely serious” breach of procedure was witnessed by two Care Inspectorate officers at the Broomfield Road centre, and resulted in the dismissal of a member of staff following an internal investigation.
The issue was recorded in an inspector’s report following the March 20 visit, which gave the home its second weak grading in three months.
Qualities of care and support, staffing, and management and leadership were graded “weak” while the quality of environment was graded “adequate” the same results given after an inspection on January 22 this year.
The lead inspector commented they observed one service user “with very obvious swallowing difficulties”.
She added: “It was of concern to us that although staff had made a referral to speech and language therapy, they had taken no direct action to reduce the risk presented to the service user.
“They also told us that they were aware of the potential impact to the service user’s health but they were unable to implement any dietary measures without the direction of guidance of the primary healthcare team.
“We raised this with the management team who placed immediate strategies to help reduce the risks presented to the service user with a normal diet and escalated the referral to the primary healthcare team.”
The inspectors further noted that staff “lacked confidence, knowledge and skill” in managing choking risks, but did note that staff felt “positive” about the service’s future and some steps had been made to safeguard the health of service users since the January inspection.
Montrose Nursing Home is a 30-bed unit for older people, at which nurses are employed.
The home is owned and managed by Tamaris (RAM) Limited, a member of the Four Seasons Health Care Group.
A spokesman for the group said: “We are sorry that some aspects of care did not meet the standards that we expect all of our homes to provide.
“We have been implementing a comprehensive improvement plan since January and we have continued to make further progress over recent months,” he said.
“We now have a permanent home manager in place who is highly experienced both as a nurse and as a manager and have been recruiting additional nursing staff.
“In response to the concerns raised about the resident with swallowing difficulties, we took this extremely seriously.
“An immediate investigation was undertaken, resulting in a staff member being dismissed for failure to follow our procedures.”