Nursing Home Injury Or Abuse: How Can You Prove Fault?

By Admin, 1 year ago | Campers

Ensuring the health and safety of your loved ones should be your topmost priority when signing them up for a nursing home. Nursing home injury is so common these days that for every 20 people, one adult is experiencing it; that’s why the number of cases reported each year has reached more than 4 million. However, due to the negligence of the nursing homes and sometimes even the resident’s loved ones, most of the cases are not reported.

Even though the nursing staff is negligent in most cases, it’s quite challenging to prove whether they are truly responsible or not. This is because many adults requiring nursing home care suffer from hearing issues, defective eyesight, psychological problems, disrupted voice patterns, etc. Consequently, they are barely able to explain or provide proof that they were physically harassed, emotionally manipulated, sexually or financially abused, or suffering from any other kind of injury. Therefore, to help you, here are some steps for proving negligence in cases involving nursing home injuries.

Identify the Problem

There is a greater chance of being able to deal with a problem beforehand if it is identified at the right time, especially if the problem is related to your loved one. Since the health conditions of the elders make them particularly susceptible, they need to be monitored by a family member. Unfortunately, the negligence of the family members leads the caretakers to treat the elders poorly. This is the primary reason why the staff at nursing homes neglects the physical and mental health of their patients. So it's better to check every minor detail of your elders and stay connected to them with clear and open communication. Additionally, here are some signs that can help identify the abuse and mistreatment caused by the nursing houses.

Poor room maintenance.
Bad health condition.
Behavioral changes.
Bruises or injury marks on the body of the elders.
Uncertain account activity.
Bedsores.
Overdose of heavy medicines.
Uncertain death.
Restrictions on the meeting time.
Unhygienic clothes and room environment.
Dehydration.
Minimal staff.

Report Poor Medical Care

The standard of care being provided should be a priority while selecting a nursing home since the lives of your loved ones are at stake. Taking the wrong medication can certainly be a risk that isn’t worth taking, and may even prove to be fatal or trigger highly complex diseases. In addition, since your elders are already aging, they require special care and treatment to guarantee that they are able to access medical facilities if any emergency occurs.

Many nursing homes promise the best future homes for the elders, yet, after admission, they neglect their resident’s health and offer less assistance than promised due to inadequate medical facilities or being understaffed. That’s why it’s necessary to report the problem the moment it is detected and before things get out of control. You never want to be in a position where you have to feel guilty that your elders are in bad condition because of your negligence.

Support a Follow Up Action

After making a formal complaint, follow-up action must be taken by the health inspectors and legal agencies, especially by the facility in charge of the reported agency. Subsequently, these agencies collect evidence from different sources to prove the poor care that's been reported. To elaborate, here are some ways these facilities often follow up:

They visit the reported healthcare, nursing centers, etc., uninvited and unannounced to objectively observe their services and environment.
They visit the place under the guise of being a visitor or patient to evaluate the facility behind the scenes.
They observe how they treat their patients physically and mentally.
They check the records of the medication given to the patients.
They interview the staff and patients to conduct qualitative research.
They also ask questions to the family members of the particular complaints.
They obtain visual evidence of the patient’s hygiene, any physical bruises, and the equipment or the quality of the items used in the room.

Take Legal Action

Keeping a check on all the nursing facilities like hospital services, nursing home staff, assisted living facilities, etc., is a necessity since the legal agencies often fail to report the poor care until the situation gets critical. For example, the effects of malnutrition, poor emotional condition, sexual abuse, financial abuse, domestic violence, etc., are not reported frequently. Therefore, many caretakers use Abuse Litigation to manipulate the elders. For instance, many fraudulent nursing homes try to rob the elders by making them sign fraudulently drafted property papers and wills. Therefore, people hire attorneys, who help them collect the legal evidence of domestic, sexual, mental, and financial abuse nursery caretakers are responsible for. Additionally, they also help them prepare the right strategies and documentation to prove the injustice.

Check the Standard of Services

The best way to ensure that your elders don’t become victims of sexual, financial, and mental abuse is to select the nursing homes that follow all the rules and regulations and provide a high standard of care. Besides, a guardian must ensure that their loved ones don’t suffer from any physical or mental abuse due to their negligence. So, they must have a proper license with a clear history of providing standard services. In addition, here are some requirements that ensure that they provide healthy customer service.

The environment of the place should be free from hazardous spaces or stuff that could lead to accidents.
They must have proper attendants who should provide constant monitoring of the residents.
They must have specialists and doctors to provide diagnoses and prescribe the appropriate medications and physiotherapy sessions.
They should have convenient automatic wheelchairs.
They should provide intercom devices to the elders to ensure they can call for assistance in cases of emergency and have nurses available 24/7.

Keeping an eye on the staff or services you hire gives the attendants the impression that they are being monitored; this way, they work harder with more efficiency to prevent errors. Besides, you can never know if your loved ones are getting suitable medical and emotional attention or not until you don't keep a strict check on their routine.

Therefore it's your duty as a guardian to look out for your elders when you notice anything unusual like bruises on their bodies, fractured bones, bedsores, suspicious activity on their bank accounts, and other questionable behaviors on the part of caregivers. So, it's better if you assess the behavior of your elders and caregivers critically. This way, if you find something wrong, or if your patient's condition gets worse, you can file a lawsuit against that specific nursing home.