Nursing home abuse is a despicable act that takes many different forms and, unfortunately, is prevalent in assisted living facilities across the country today. If you or a loved one has suffered nursing home abuse, speak with an experienced nursing home abuse attorney in Winder immediately to discuss how they can help.
What Is Nursing Home Abuse?
Nursing home abuse is a blanket term used to describe types of harm residents suffer due to carelessness, negligence, intentional acts, or wrongdoing at the hands of staff or management of nursing facilities. These facilities include nursing homes, assisted living, and other long-term care facilities.
Alarming Nursing Home Abuse Statistics
Nursing home abuse is a public health problem that constitutes a violation of human rights. The World Health Organization (WHO) reports these alarming statistics about abuse of older people:
- Around one in six people aged 60 and older experienced some form of abuse in community settings in the last year.
- Abuse in nursing homes and long-term care facilities is high, with 2 in 3 staff reporting they committed nursing home abuse in the past year.
- Elder abuse rates increased during the pandemic. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) estimates that as many as 1 in 5 seniors experienced elder abuse during the pandemic, an increase of 83.6 percent from before COVID-19.
- The population of people aged 60 and older (globally) will more than double to roughly 2 billion seniors in 2050.
Additional data indicates that more than 40 percent of nursing home residents have reported abuse, with more than 90 percent stating they or another resident of the nursing facility has been neglected.
Up to half of nursing home attendants confess to abusing or neglecting older patients, including Certified Nursing Assistants (CANs) admitting to verbally abusing, yelling, and using curse words with nursing home residents.
Nursing home abuse is never okay, and you don't have to tolerate or accept it. Fight back. Know your legal rights. Schedule a free consultation with a personal injury attorney skilled in nursing home abuse to discuss legal recourse and eligible compensation if you or a loved one are a victim of nursing home abuse.
Most Common Types of Nursing Home Abuse
There are seven common types of nursing home abuse that personal injury attorneys work with victims regarding. They are:
Physical Nursing Home Abuse
Physical abuse refers to any mistreatment by an employee that leads to physical pain, injury, or impairment. Unfortunately, nursing home residents are subject to many kinds of physical abuse, including:
- Punching
- Slapping
- Kicking
- Tripping
- Burning of the skin
- Pushing and shoving
- Pulling too hard on a resident
- Aggressive and rough handling of a resident
- Long-term and nursing home facility staff also report ignoring medical conditions or patient calls for help, which is another type of physical nursing home abuse.
Psychological Abuse
Psychological abuse manifests as emotional and verbal abuse and occurs when a resident suffers emotional pain from intentional and malicious acts. Some examples of psychological abuse in nursing homes are:
- Name-calling, yelling, intimidating, and threatening
- Taunting residents
- Taking away quality-of-life necessities like glasses, hearing aids, canes, and walkers
- Limiting freedoms like having access to transportation and phones
- Giving the silent treatment to a resident
- Isolation from other residents or even family
Psychological abuse can be more challenging to recognize but can look like a resident being fearful of your departure or having an extreme dislike for a specific caregiver.
Sexual Abuse
Sexual abuse refers to any intentional acts that sexually violate a nursing home resident without their consent. Sexual nursing home abuse includes:
- Non-consensual touching
- Coerced or forced nudity
- Indecent exposure to resident
- Unwanted touching
- Sexually explicit photography
- Forcing a resident to view explicit content
- Rape and sodomy
Sexual abuse can have physical, emotional, and psychological effects. It can also lead to sexually transmitted infections (STIs) that can be dangerous to residents. If you or a loved one contracted a disease, curable or permanent, due to nursing home abuse, you need to speak with a personal injury lawyer immediately to discuss your next legal steps.
Neglectful Types of Nursing Home Abuse
Neglectful acts of nursing home abuse include failing to provide services and goods necessary to maintain physical and mental health. There are eight essential areas where nursing home staff and management neglect residents:
- Medical Neglect: Not doing prescribed wound care, not providing or improperly giving medicine, not doing their range of motion exercises, not reporting injuries, not moving residents properly, including doing one-person transfers when patients require two.
- Neglect of Basic Needs: Not providing food and water, not changing residents' bedding after incontinence episodes, not changing diapers, not doing scheduled toileting, or not helping residents who ask for toilet assistance.
- Neglect of Personal Hygiene: Not doing oral and dental care, not giving residents baths, not washing residents' laundry, and not regularly cleaning and sanitizing bathroom sinks, toilets, showers, and floors.
- Social and Emotional Neglect: Not allowing residents to interact with other residents, family, or friends. Common with memory-related disorders like Alzheimer's disease, they rely heavily on caretakers to get them around the facility.
- Self-Neglect: Behaviors that threaten a resident's safety or health, such as not seeking assistance or refusing the help of others.
- Abandonment: Occurs when nursing home staff and management leave a patient to themselves when they need daily assistance with hygiene, eating meals, and medical care.
- Malnutrition: Occurs when a resident has been severely neglected regarding meal times and has failed to receive adequate nutrients. It can cause dramatic weight loss and an increased risk of infection.
- Dehydration: A common neglect involving a resident not receiving sufficient fluids, leading to low blood pressure, confusion, and dry skin.
With eight types of patient negligence, neglect is the number one type of nursing home abuse. Victims of nursing home neglect should speak with a personal injury lawyer to discover what options they have legally in obtaining financial compensation.
Financial Nursing Home Abuse
Financial abuse in nursing homes and long-term care facilities occurs when staff or management manipulates and exploits a resident for financial gain. For example:
- Accessing and using bank accounts and credit cards
- Falsifying signatures to gain access to a resident's funds or properties
- Manipulating a resident to sign a document for financial gain
- Stealing a resident's money, jewelry, or other possessions
- Identity theft
- Undue influence to change a person's last will and testament
- Scaring or threatening a resident into transferring assets
Other deceptive practices staff may employ in nursing homes include creating fake investment opportunities for their residents to invest in. Charging for unprovided services is another financial scam and abuse.
Overmedicating
Nursing homes want people docile, especially those with any form of dementia. Nursing facilities across the U.S. administer antipsychotic drugs to over 179,000 residents without a diagnosis for which the drugs are approved.
The drugs are also often given without informed consent. Overmedicating is essentially abuse that imposes chemical restraints on the patient.
Wrongful Death
If you lost a loved one due to the negligence, abuse, or wrongdoing of a nursing home, you may be eligible to file a wrongful death claim or lawsuit. Common causes of wrongful death claims involving nursing home abuse include:
- Neglect
- Assault
- Lack of basic care
- Medication Mistakes
- Failure to treat conditions like pneumonia
- Falls and other accidents
- Complications like sepsis from untreated bedsores
Call An Experienced Nursing Home Abuse Attorney Today
If your family member has been the victim of nursing home abuse or you have lost a loved one as a result of nursing negligence, you should consult with a personal injury lawyer immediately to discuss your legal rights. They will fight for fair compensation for you and your loved one’s suffering.