Coroner condemns "institutionalised abuse" after five pensioners died

A Nursing Home home where five pensioners died through neglect was plagued by “institutionalised abuse”, an inquest heard yesterday.
Blundering staff at Orchid View gave vulnerable residents wrong drugs doses, left them alone in soiled bedding and clothes, and manhandled them.
One OAP, Jean Halfpenny, died after being given an overdose of the blood-thinning drug warfarin.
But whistleblower Lisa Martin told the hearing she was ordered to shred the 77-year-old’s drugs chart after she had gone to hospital bleeding to death.
She said a colleague declared: “S***, we can’t send her to hospital with those. They will shut us down.”
Coroner Penelope Schofield said those involved in neglect at the £3,000-a-month care home in Copthorne, West Sussex, should be “ashamed”.
She spoke at the Horsham inquest into the deaths of 19 OAPs over two years. The home was shut in 2011.
A five-week inquest heard how some residents were given wrong doses of medication, left soiled and unattended due to staff shortages and there was a lack of management.
Call bells were also often not answered for long periods or could not be reached by elderly people living at the home, which was deemed "an accident waiting to happen".
Ms Schofield said: "There was institutionalized abuse throughout the home and it started, in my view, at a very early stage, and nobody did anything about it.
"It was completely mismanaged and understaffed and failed to provide a safe environment for residents."
Ms Schofield added: “There was ­institutionalized abuse throughout. This, to me, was from the top down.”
Orchid View care home: Coroner condemns "institutionalised abuse" after five pensioners died - Mirror Online

by Bernard Hamill
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