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NHQI Survey Amongst Nursing Home Relatives Reveals Serious Concerns in Quality of Care, Pre-Dating COVID

July  2021 – A snapshot survey, conducted by the Nursing Home Quality Initiative (NHQI) and completed by people identifying as relatives, advocates and in one case a nurse with over 30 years of experience, reveals that many of the serious concerns about nursing homes predate the pandemic. The survey was completed by 49 people and included representation from counties Carlow, Cavan, Clare, Cork, Dublin, Kerry, Kildare, Laois, Leitrim, Louth, Meath, Tipperary, Wexford and Wicklow. While...

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NHQI’s Response to RTE’s Prime Time

July 2021 – The Nursing Home Quality Initiative (NHQI) – a group of concerned volunteer citizens – is angry and saddened but not surprised at the scenes that unfolded on tonight’s Prime Time. In our view, many of these issues have been endemic for years – COVID-19 has just exposed the existing cracks and revealed the many practices that are lacking in dignity and disrespectful of human rights. We express our sympathy and solidarity with...

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New Volunteer Group Will Represent the Voice of Nursing Home Residents and Relatives and Campaign for Systemic Change in Older Person Care

December 2020: A new group, Nursing Home Quality Initiative (NHQI) led by concerned, volunteer citizens from around Ireland, has pledged to campaign for systemic change in the care and quality of life of older people. The group is calling for volunteers to join and become actively involved. All NHQI members either currently have or have had loved ones in nursing home care. The group is committed to monitoring compliance and enforcement of nursing home regulations and standards Read more…

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Care Home Put Elderly to Bed at 5pm

October 2020 – From a letter to The Sunday Independent A chara – I wish to refer to Maeve Sheehan’s article in the Sunday Independent of the 27th September last entitled ‘Care Home Put Elderly to Bed at 5.00 pm’ on a fine summer’s afternoon. I experienced the same problem in the case of my late Mother, who was a resident in a private nursing home in Dublin. In order to avoid her being put Read more…

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Complaints system and nursing homes

From a Letter to the Irish Times – September 2020 A chara, – The Ombudsman is to be commended for drawing attention to a gap in the complaints system available to nursing home residents and their families (Simon Carswell, “Further powers to investigate complaints over deaths in care sought”, News, September 8th). The reality is that there is no effective independent complaints procedure in the regulatory system for nursing homes overseen by the Health Information Read more…

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NHQI Views on the Need for an Independent Complaints Resolution Process

December 2020 – The absence of any statutory mechanism to investigate individual complaints against nursing homes is one of the more glaring omissions from HIQA’s current model of regulation. While HIQA carries out inspections of private and public nursing homes, it cannot investigate individual complaints into residential centres. This state of affairs has been a cause of much distress and frustration for countless nursing home residents and their families over these past eleven years. As Read more…

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Sharing the Best – Maintaining a Sense of Adventure

Best practice in activities According to a report from the Irish Centre for Social Gerontology at NUI Galway, significant financial savings can be made by the State in health and care costs, if older people are encouraged to engage in creative arts and in physical activity. The research findings confirm what has been known for countless generations – a healthy and outgoing lifestyle, with appropriate exercise, contributes to a happy and productive old age from Read more…

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the work of the following people and organisations for the expertise they provided. James Mahon for his concept and graphics design work The Version 1 Corporate Social Responsibility programme for their assistance in developing the website. Arema Connect Call Centre for providing call centre services..

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Privacy Policy

DATA PROTECTION & PRIVACY STATEMENT This Data Protection and Privacy Statement has been developed to provide assurance to you in relation to NHQI’s …. The Data Protection Officer has overall responsibility… How we collect information? The types of information we collect Who we collect information from Why we collect information What we do with your information Sharing your information How we keep your data secure Maintaining data security means making sure that: . Your rights Read more…

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NHQI Views on the Need for Proper Consultation with Residents and Relatives

International research consistently demonstrates that family members continue to provide instrumental, emotional, and personal care support after their loved one moves into a nursing home (Davies & Nolan, 2006; Gaugler, 2005; Ryan & McKenna, 2015), contradicting the myth that family members relinquish their roles as caregivers after this transition. In one piece of research, families were seen to be involved in the timely detection of changes in health in three key ways: noticing signs of Read more…

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