Nursing homes were pressured into accepting patients with coronavirus while some hospitals refused to admit patients from care homes, according to a new study.

A report by the Queen’s Nursing Institute (QNI) found homes were told hospitals had a blanket “no admissions” policy at the height of the pandemic.

The QNI, a charity which focuses on the improvement of nursing care of people in their own home, found care home residents were regularly refused treatment in April and May.

But the study also found one in 10 care home staff were given ‘do not resuscitate’ orders by the NHS during the peak of the pandemic, meaning doctors could not attempt to resuscitate a patient’s heart with CPR or defibrillators.

Seventy homes (43 per cent of nurses from the 163 care homes surveyed) said they received a discharged hospital patient who was not tested for the virus during April and May.

A fifth said they had received a patient discharged from hospital who was Covid-19 positive.

One in four homes said it was difficult to get hospital treatment for patients, while a third said they had had difficulty accessing GPs and district nurses.

One nurse said: “The acute sector pushed us to take untested admissions.

“The two weeks of daily deaths during an outbreak were possibly the two worst weeks of my 35-year nursing career.”

Another reported being told to change the status of all the home’s residents to “do not resuscitate” but said staff had refused to comply.

Crystal Oldman, chief executive of the QNI, said she was worried by the number of homes that had been unable to access support from GPs, district nurses and hospitals.

She said: “We were really surprised to see this. These are universal health services. It is completely opposite to the protective ring around care homes that was being talked about at the time.”