LAS VEGAS: Untrained home carers are putting the elderly and disabled ‘at risk of serious harm’ while giving medication, performing intimate procedures and looking after patients with dementia, warns a survey today.
Care staff say they are increasingly being asked to perform tasks previously only carried out by nurses. These include changing catheter and colostomy bags, feeding through a tube and even administering morphine. The worrying conclusions come in a survey of 1,000 workers.
More than three-quarters asked for more training to cope with the extra procedures but only 49 per cent had received any…