A NURSE has told an inquest into the deaths of three elderly care home residents how she confronted the manager after she found one of them sitting in his own excrement.

Another nurse told the hearing into the 2016 deaths of residents of Sowerby House near Thirsk, how she saw another man eating his breakfast at a bedside table covered in hundreds of ants.

York Press:

The premises have been investigated by North Yorkshire Police and the Care Quality Commission and its owners no longer run it as a nursing home, the inquest in Northallerton heard.

Coroner Michael Oakley resumed inquests into the deaths of former lorry driver Albert Pooley, 89, and 85-year-olds James Metcalfe and Harry Kilvington.

District nurse Penelope Hutchinson said she visited Mr Metcalfe last July and found him with chapped lips, sitting in his own urine and excrement, having not been checked for four-and-a-half hours. She told the inquest she confronted manager Joanne King after she cleaned Mr Metcalfe up with a colleague.

“I went to see her and said ‘This is totally unacceptable, this gentleman deserves basic standards of care, this is somebody’s father, somebody’s husband’,” the district nurse said.

Three months before, agency nurse Kristina Parsons was so concerned about standards that she walked out of her shift four hours early. She told the inquest: “I went down a corridor, there was a man sat on the edge of the bed eating breakfast with the bedside table crawling in ants. It was not just ten or 15, it was hundreds of them.”

The coroner heard from the family of Mr Pooley, an ex-lorry driver who had dementia and other conditions.

After a serious fall at home in Thirsk he went to Sowerby House, weighing around nine-and-a-half stone, in December 2015.

When he died on May 1 2016 he had lost around three stone. Pathologist Dr Carl Gray told the hearing Mr Pooley showed signs of dehydration and was emaciated. But he said that did not prove that neglect led to his death.

Mr Pooley died from a number of factors, including pneumonia, heart disease and a urinary infection and was on the end-of-life pathway, the inquest heard.

The manager of another care home where Mr Kilvington was due to move, said she was struck by a very strong smell of urine when she visited the premises. Mr Kilvington had a number of serious conditions including Alzheimer’s and died from sepsis from a foot ulcer in November.

Paul Kelsey, a senior carer at the home, told the inquest standards have “drastically” improved.

The inquest continues today.