Report from the Select Committee on Nursing Homes (Registration).

  • Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Select Committee on Nursing Homes (Registration)
Date:
1926
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report from the Select Committee on Nursing Homes (Registration). Source: Wellcome Collection.

    57/284 (page 31)
    30 March, 1926. ] (EES ATI UTES ED [ Continued. and Y number unregistered on the staff, without any regard to the disease or the illness for which the patients have come in, could not be worked. 332. But it must be worked in some way. If a person has a nursing home and wants to take general medical cases, or is going to take surgical cases, or is going to take any other kind of cases, that person must staff the home in some way and must have some standard P—They have a minimum staff. . 333. What is the figure; that is what I want. I can quite understand that there are differences in different cases, but the people who are running the home have to face the problem and they have to solve it for themselves?—(Dr. Lord.) ‘There certainly should be a provision that there would always be available an adequate staff of trained people at night, because that is one of the great com- plaints of some nursing homes—that there is no trained nurse available at night unless you get one out of bed for the special purpose. 334. Do you agree with the suggestion of General Luce, which I had also noted, that if the nurse with the medical officer of health were of the rank and status of a matron, that would obviate any feeling of hostile disrespect on the part of those who were being inspected P— (Dr. Bone.) Of course we are very definite in our view that the inspection ought not to be carried out by a nurse. 335. But do you object even in con- junction with the medical man?—You mean, if there were to be two inspectors? B36. Yes—No, I do not think we should object then. 337. I suppose the Deputation agrees that it is quite possible, apart from the question of complaints of which we have heard so much, for a patient to be quite satisfied with the treatment, to have been very kindly nursed, and to be full of praise for the nurses, and yet to have been very inefficiently nursed?—Oh, yes; that might thhappen. (Dr. Fothergill.) - That might happen in your own house. 338. A kind heart covers many sins?— (Dr. Bone.) That might happen. 339. And therefore inspection would require to be something more than merely listening to complaints by querulous people?—I am afraid no inspection and no law-making would ever get rid of that particular difficulty. 340. Well, I do not know; the evidence of the patients would not be the sole ¢riterion ?—No. Mrs. Philipson. 341. Dr. Davies dealt with the points that 1 wanted to speak about, and 1 was rather glad to hear Dr. Bone say that he had stated his case rather wide about that one particular point. I know there are many nursing homes run by doctors who send their patients probably year in and year out to the same nursing home, but you will admit that there are others where the doctors send their patients only occasionally, and it is in those homes particularly, I think, that we really want inspection. This is one point that I wish to mention: for in- stance, there are nursing homes run prob- ably by a matron or someone calling her- self a matron, not a very qualified nurse at all, but who has charge of and runs a nursing home. They have an operation case sent in by a doctor. For the opera- tion case, for two nights probably over the operation very often they engage a nurse who is really resident, as you know many nurses are, paying part of their time by giving a certain percentage of their fees to the place where they stay, or are kept for a certain period. Those people engage those nurses for, say, two nights over the difficult part of the opera- tion, and the rest of the time these people are nursed by a housemaid, their meals taken up by a housemaid, and not properly nursed at all. The people who run these nursing homes have the ad- vantage of having a first-class nurse at a very little fee engaged from a home, and they get over the worst part of the opera- tion and then the people are improperly nursed. There are many nursing homes after all where the people are paying ex- orbitant fees; I say that those nursing homes in the strict sense of the word are not nursing homes at all, and it is an injustice to the public and to the nurs- ing profession. Another point you men- tioned was about the homes for mental Judging by the number of letters I have received in the last week, I should think these homes certainly require supervision. — (Dr. Fothergill.) Are these doctors’ houses ? 342. I am coming to that point now. You will say at once that doctors, like everybody else, must be above suspicion. T am not saying they are not, but surely there may be certain doctors, and I should think this inspection would be of more benefit to the medical profession than anybody else. I do not see at all