More could have been done to protect tragic Molly, admits carer
CLINIC DID NOT PROPERLY COMPLETE CHECKS ON WOMAN WHO DIED
A HEALTHCARE assistant who worked at a mental health clinic where a young woman died says more should have been done to ensure her safety.
Molly-star Kirk was 20 when she died while an inpatient at the Farndon Unit in Newark on May 29, 2022.
She had mental health problems, including emotionally unstable personality disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder as well as a lengthy history of being admitted to mental health units.
She was moved from a clinic in Maidstone to the Farndon Unit, run by Elysium Healthcare the previous October for a specific kind of therapy.
Tamzin Irvine-brentnall, a fulltime healthcare assistant at Farndon at the time of Molly’s death, joined the clinic in August 2021 and was one of the staff who looked after her the day that she died.
A 10-day inquest into Molly’s death heard how was in bed for 14 hours with no interaction with staff for medication or food before she was found.
On Tuesday, Ms Irvine-brentnall told the hearing at Nottingham Council House that Molly did not wake up at around 9am to take her prescribed medication and no further attempts were made to rouse her.
Ms Irvine-brentnall checked on Molly at 12.58pm, entering her room and calling her name. There was no response, so she shook her arm. She told the inquest that Molly shrugged but did not wake up.
She told Coroner Laurinda Bower that she was not concerned when Molly did not respond for a second time.
The court heard how Ms Irvinebrentnall was in Molly’s room for a total of 10 seconds during the lunchtime check, leaving her only six to eight seconds to perform any observations, according to CCTV footage.
Ms Irvine-brentnall said that the checks were “not enough” and longer observations were needed to ensure the safety of patients. When asked how confident she felt about whether Molly was alive when she tried to wake her up, Ms Irvinebrentnall said she did not know and burst into tears.
She explained that, although she thought Molly was alive, she realised while giving evidence that maybe she wasn’t.
She said: “[The emergency response] was chaos, stressful, one of the worst days of my life”. The court was told that Ms Irvinebrentnall had a two-week induction at the Farndon Unit but couldn’t remember what she was told regarding mental health observations and received no further training on them.
She filled her competency checklist three months after she started her job, on November 8, 2021.
Although she had log-in details for the care plans of the patients, she told the court that she did not look through them “that often”, unless a new patient had been admitted, for example.
She therefore relied on other staff to tell her when changes were made to the care plans.
She was not aware that Molly was not supposed to be in her room between 8am and 8pm to encourage her to socialise, even though the information was included on her records.
Due to the severity of Molly’s condition, she was supposed to be checked 12 times an hour, once every five minutes.
However, evidence presented during the inquest has revealed that these observations were “not being done as they were supposed to”, with only 78 checks out of 180 conducted between midnight and 3pm on the day Molly died.
However, these were recorded as completed and multiple staff admitted in court that the checks were not, in fact, conducted.
The jury inquest continues.