15 August 2019
During a routine inspection
The Leonard Pulham Nursing home providing personal and nursing care to 34 older people. At the time of the inspection 30 people were residing in the service. The service is purpose built over two floors. People share facilities such as the lounge and dining areas.
People’s experience of using this service and what we found
People told us they felt safe living in the service. Improvements had been made to the how the service assessed and monitored risks related to care and the environment. Staff recruitment systems minimised the possibility of employees providing unsafe care to people. Medicines were safely stored and administered by trained staff. Systems were in place to ensure the service was safe.
People’s needs were assessed, and the environment was clean and well maintained. People were supported to enjoy their meals and their nutrition and hydration was monitored to enable people to remain healthy.
Staff were supported through training, supervision and appraisals as well as team meetings and daily staff meetings. Supervision wasn’t provided as regularly as the provider had wished, but this was being addressed by the recruitment of additional senior staff.
Staff were “Kind and caring.” Most people were happy to spend time with staff and interactions we observed were overall positive, meaningful, and respectful. We did observe one incident where a person who was unwell did not have their needs met in a timely way, but this was not the norm. This was because in addition to this incident people were not always offered a choice of what time they went to bed and got up in the morning.
Some people, relatives and staff told us there were not enough staff. The registered manager disputed this. We could find no evidence to support the concern apart from our observation that staff were very busy throughout the time we spent in the service. The registered manager agreed to explore people’s concerns more thoroughly.
People’s cultural, religious and dietary needs were acknowledged and where possible met. People’s preferences and dislikes were documented, however, more detail about people’s personal histories would assist staff to have a more holistic understanding of people.
The service supported people with communication and was compliant with the Accessible Information Standards. Accidents and incidents were clearly recorded, and investigations were undertaken to ensure the risk of repetition was minimised.
People were supported to have maximum choice and control of their lives and staff supported them in the least restrictive way possible and in their best interests; the policies and systems in the service supported this practice.
The new management in the service had implemented audits to check the quality of the service, these had been completed and actions had been taken to improve the provision of care and support.
For more details, please see the full report which is on the CQC website at www.cqc.org.uk
Rating at last inspection and update
The last rating for this service was requires improvement (28 January 2019) and there were multiple breaches of regulation. The provider completed an action plan after the last inspection to show what they would do and by when to improve. At this inspection we found improvements had been made and the provider was no longer in breach of regulations.
Why we inspected
This was a planned inspection based on the previous rating. This inspection was carried out to follow up on action we told the provider to take at the last inspection.
You can read the report from our last comprehensive inspection, by selecting the ‘all reports’ link for The Leonard Pulham Nursing Home on our website at www.cqc.org.uk.
Follow up
We will continue to monitor information we receive about the service until we return to visit as per our re-inspection programme. If we receive any concerning information we may inspect sooner.