Nursing homes provide a wide range of specialized caregiver, healthcare, recovery and social services for more than a million elderly and disabled people throughout the country each year. These facilities offer housing to patients who can’t care for themselves in a senior or an assisted living community while recovering from a severe short-term illness or major surgery or coping with a long-term illness.
Nursing home owners and administrators promote these facilities as safe environments that meet or exceed all federal, state and local health and safety regulations. Yet, they often have insufficient safeguards in place. Abusers and other predators also target these sites because they know they can find victims who are incapable of fighting back.
Common Types of Abuse
Nursing homes are havens for criminals who primarily perform four types of abuse. With the first type, neglect, a staff member doesn’t support a patient’s basic needs. For example, they fail to give the victim regular baths or withhold medicines.
With the second type, physical abuse, a staff member, another patient or a visitor might kick, punch, slap or shake the victim. They might also perform non-consensual intimate or sexual acts or combine different types of abuse. Negligent physical abuse, for example, occurs when a staff member doesn’t care about a patient’s bleeding or bruising disorder and uses an excessively tight and painful grip during physical interactions.
The third type of abuse, theft, involves money and other forms of property. One or more staff members who shop for a patient might buy the cheapest possible supplies and then pocket any remaining cash. Facility workers or even other patients might steal personal property at any time, such as extra snacks and beverages, small makeup and jewelry items, or over-the-counter medications.
Many people don’t recognize the fourth type, emotional or psychological abuse, during short visits. Anyone might perform mild, moderate or severe verbal or physical assaults. For example, a patient might feel constant fear because an employee regularly threatens to withhold necessary medical care unless they give the person their spending money. They might endure harassment because someone repeatedly laughs at their situation or mocks their symptoms.
Facility Search Tips
Before selecting a nursing home, a caregiver, advocate or other person or group legally responsible for a patient’s care should always perform thorough research. The companies and organizations that oversee nursing facilities do everything they can to cast their communities in the best possible light, including using attractive photos and positive testimonials on their websites and in marketing materials.
As a result, a patient’s representative should vet any facilities that are potential candidates for housing and care by searching media and news websites for past articles and breaking news stories that reported health and safety issues. They should also reach out to local community outreach organizations, churches and social groups for recommendations and warnings.
When examining online reviews for a specific facility, they must remember that the star review rating scale isn’t always an accurate measurement system. A site that has a 4.8-star rating, for example, might have a few negative reviews that describe abuses. Some companies also pay reputation management firms to post fake reviews and fight to remove negative ones. Individual staff members might also use their social networks to push positive reviews.
On-Site Red Flags
The signs of abuse can be obvious or hidden. Obvious signs include patients with bedsores, bruises or scratches that can’t be explained by their medical conditions. The worst sites often have immaculate, modern public visitation and show or model room areas and dirty or older-looking occupied rooms. Musty smells and visual signs of mold and unclean floors and windows are additional examples of neglect.
A patient’s representative should visit randomly whenever possible to guarantee that staff can’t clean up beforehand to hide signs of abuse. If the patient is wearing clothes that cover the entire body during a visit, they should pull up sleeves and pant legs to check for bruises and wounds. They should double-check that nothing has been stolen and photograph everything as well for future reference.
Some adults can’t speak about abuses because they experience too much fear or communication issues. Visitors should look for emotional signs of fear like anxiety or depression and physical signs of wariness around staff like flinching, shaking or trembling. They should take the patient to see a doctor outside of the facility at least twice a year, even if the facility has a full medical team. Some abusive medical personnel in nursing homes will claim that a self-advocating patient who complains about abuse suffers from paranoia to cover up their crimes.
How Can a Legal Professional Help?
A local nursing home abuse lawyer does more than provide support during personal injury cases. They always maintain lists of bad facilities. They can provide the person who has a patient’s medical power of attorney with search advice and guidance for recognizing abuse. Lastly, they can pursue fair compensation for victims and work to shut down unsafe sites.
