Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect: We Owe Them Better

Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect: We Owe Them Better

It’s disturbing – the number of nursing home abuse, neglect, and negligence lawsuit claims that are filed each year. More alarming is the amount of abuse, neglect, and negligence in nursing homes that go unreported. There are several reasons why so much abuse, neglect, and negligence of patients living there never get reported.

Reasons such as fear of retribution for reporting abuse, medical conditions that limit or make communicating abuse and or neglect to others impossible, no close relatives or friends visiting regularly, Alzheimer’s patients and patients suffering from dementia, nursing home owners and staff cover-ups, and family members who do not know the signs of abuse or neglect.

We owe them better. We owe them protection from being abused, neglected or placed in harms way due to negligence on the part of the nursing home or its staff. They have the right to be safe there, in which they are often forced to live in because suitable alternatives are not available to them.

Many hospitals and nursing homes across the country are operating without proper facility staffing because of a reported 100,000 nursing staff shortage that exists across the country. This means that the staff has more patients per staff member than they should to ensure that every patient is getting the nursing care they need, deserve, and have a right to.

There are some very compassionate and dedicated nursing professionals that work long hours trying everything within their power to provide the best care to all patients, despite the lack of staffing. But even the most dedicated and caring nursing professional cannot be everywhere at once and patient care decreases, neglect and negligence occurs, and the patients ultimately suffer the consequences of understaffed facilities.

It is an unfortunate reality that there are also those working in health care who regularly abuse and neglect patients under their care. Patients are especially vulnerable due to weakened physical, mobility, and mental abilities to the depraved indifference of the health care workers charged with caring for them.

We owe them better. We owe them stricter legislation to protect them and to levy harsher penalties against health care workers who abuse and neglect them. We owe it to them to become their advocates and demand better care and better avenues for reporting, filing, and tracking of nursing home abuse, neglect, and negligence complaints.

The elderly living there have been subjected to such abuses as physical and sexual assaults. Patients with limited or no mobility have endured humiliation such as being placed naked in wheelchairs and left in hallways of nursing homes. Patients have been denied water or food at times. Patients have been forced to lie in their own waste for hours.

Bedridden patients have been left unturned, allowing for painful, bleeding bedsores to form and fester untreated for long periods. Yelling, and demeaning language directed at patients is common in many nursing homes. Negligent disregard of precautions to prevent patient slips and falls is also common. Patients have had their money and personal belongings stolen by nursing home employees. This is by no means a complete listing of all the abuse, neglect, and negligence that is happening to patients in nursing homes every day. We owe them better. We owe them respect and dignity and quality care at all times. We owe them abuse, neglect, and negligent – free living conditions.

If you suspect that a loved one or someone you know who is living in one has been or is being abused, or that has suffered from staff neglect or negligence, speak to a nursing home abuse lawyer immediately. An attorney knows and understands the geriatric laws that are in place that are supposed to protect nursing home patients from abusive and neglectful care. A lawyer also knows the proper chain of command for reporting cases of abuse, neglect, and negligence of patients.

A nursing home attorney can file a lawsuit on behalf of the patient. A lawyer can convince the courts to award monetary compensation to the patient or patient’s family for substantiated claims of abuse, neglect, or negligence. An attorney can also request that the courts order the patient to be moved to unit with monitored care to ensure that further abuse, neglect, or negligence does not occur. We owe them this. They have paid their dues in life. Now it’s our turn.