By
Michael Brevda, Managing Attorney at
Senior Justice Law Firm
If your parent is in a nursing home and unable to communicate, you must
monitor their wellbeing and underlying health conditions. When a resident
cannot communicate their needs, it is impossible to know if they are being
neglected or abused.
Unfortunately, nursing home staff will not always accurately convey your
parent’s condition. This is true especially if your parent suffered
a neglect-related injury.
For these reasons, it is crucial that you remain vigilant in looking for
signs of abuse and neglect.
Below are some of the more frequent neglect-related injuries we see in
skilled nursing facilities.
Bed Sores
Bed sores are also called pressure ulcers. These are preventable wounds
on the skin that form due to unrelieved pressure.
Bed sores are the most common nursing home neglect injury that we litigate.
Sadly, sometimes an elderly bedbound patient is left sitting in bed or
a chair for hours at a time without being repositioned.
Bed sores are staged from 1 to 4, with a stage 4 bed sore being the most
severe pressure injury.
Falls
Fall injuries are the second most frequent injury that we encounter as
nursing home negligence attorneys. The most common result of a nursing
home fall are broken bones.
While it is true that not all nursing home falls are preventable, it is
the legal duty of the facility to implement a fall prevention plan. All
too often we find that the nursing home’s fall preventative measures
were woefully deficient. This is how repeated falls occur in a long term
care facility.
Unexplained Fractures
The most common cause of “mystery fractures” in nursing home
residents are unreported falls. In many immobile residents, an unexplained
fracture is secondary to the resident being dropped during a transfer.
In the most extreme circumstances, our attorneys have uncovered cases
where phantom fractures were caused by physical assaults, either perpetrated
by staff or other residents.
Regardless of the cause, unexplained broken bones must always be investigated.
Rapid Weight Loss
Nursing homes employ nutrition specialists and are legally required to
ensure a resident is getting enough calories. If a resident has compromised
swallowing, a special soft diet can be ordered.
It is highly suspicious when a resident suffers rapid weight loss of more
than 10% of their BMI (body mass index). Rapid weight loss suggests nursing
home neglect. In vulnerable immunocompromised residents, losing a lot
of weight quickly is often fatal.
Failure to Timely Treat Infection
Infections are quite common in the nursing home setting. Therefore, it
is not necessarily negligent to allow a resident to develop an infection.
Most nursing home infection wrongful death cases stem from a failure to
timely treat a symptomatic resident. In other words, if a patient is visibly
ill and the nursing home fails to react in a timely manner, then the resident
passes away of sepsis or some other infection, this may be grounds for
a wrongful death claim.
Conclusion
Most nursing homes do the right thing. However, a healthy degree of skepticism
is beneficial.
Always try to visit the nursing home at random times so the staff does
not learn your schedule. Further, when you do visit, make sure to inspect
your loved one’s skin for ulcers, wounds or bruises.
If your parent suffered a suspicious injury, you should investigate what
happened. Contact a
nursing home abuse attorney who can provide you a free case consultation.