Testing for Covid-19 will be offered to all Fife care home staff after criticism the region was not operating in line with national guidance.
A document issued to care home bosses by NHS Fife and Fife Health and Social Care Partnership (HSCP), stated that only “prioritised staff” should be tested, in cases where sending staff home would result in an increased risk to patients.
The Scottish Government confirmed the document was not in line with its policy that any care worker with symptoms should be tested through the NHS.
On Thursday, NHS Fife confirmed it would be reviewing the wording of the document.
NHS Fife’s director of public health Dona Milne said: “NHS Fife in conjunction with the Fife HSCP are in regular touch with all care homes in the kingdom to support their response to Covid-19, and have proactively encouraged participation in the health and social care staff testing programme from this sector.
“Care home managers can put their staff forward for testing and we are not aware of any care homes that have been denied access to testing for their staff.
“In addition to testing symptomatic care home staff, all consenting staff and residents are offered testing in homes where Covid-19 is known to be present, regardless of whether or not they are displaying symptoms and this is supported by our mobile Covid-19 testing team.”
Ms Milne added that Fife HSCP had set up a care home oversight group and a support team to provide rapid testing where needed and oversee the provision of personal protective equipment.
The now superseded staff testing guidance stated that only prioritised staff would be tested “due to limited testing capacity”.
It is understood the aim was to prioritise frontline staff over those in administrative roles.
A flowchart was included, which advised against testing unless a member of staff displaying symptoms worked in a team with little or no resilience to absorb the workload or their absence was likely to risk the health of patients or the wider population.
Mahri Edgar, who manages Glenburnie Care Home in Leven, described the mismatch between the advice given at local and national levels as “misleading”.
She added: “I understand that limited resources, and also the fact that self isolation remains the greatest precaution, poses the need for a criteria to be set but saying that they are testing all key workers is misleading.
“I would want staff who are from a struggling service to be put before those of services that are resilient to protect the care of residents, but the message from the government saying that all staff can be tested freely does not match practice.
“We should not have to say that we have little or no resilience before getting testing done.”
