How to Prevent Nursing Home Neglect or Abuse

Our Commitment to Preventing 

Nursing Home Neglect

One of our biggest specialties at Legal Genius is handling law suits regarding cases of nursing home neglect or abuse. We have put together a diverse team of highly qualified and compassionate professionals to handle your case if you suspect that your loved one is the victim of nursing home abuse or neglect.

This blog and our website are devoted to giving the public useful information about nursing home neglect law. We would like to have the opportunity to handle these particularly difficult cases for people who have been touched by this national tragedy. But, however we would like to do what we can to see a reduction in the number of nursing home abuse and neglect cases that ever have to come to law firms like ours.

This is why we are starting a series of articles on how to prevent abuse and neglect cases, by helping loved ones of nursing home patients to better understand the issues and signs related to detecting nursing home abuse or neglect early before it becomes a severe problem. The most important practice you can carry out is to visit your loved one not only often but at different times so the staff is very aware that you can become present at anytime.

Also be supportive and proactive with staff so that they are more readily willing to share problems they may be having with your loved one and then seek solutions to those problems. Just as importantly is to very observant of even small changes in the patient's behavior or condition. This will clue you in early to problems or areas lacking in care. 

This article will go over the different areas of nursing home abuse or neglect, and then looking for signs of mistreatment, both major and more subtle. We will also talk about what to do once you suspect nursing home neglect or abuse. 

How to Choose a Nursing Home for Your Loved One

The first thing you should do is develop an understanding of the different kinds of nursing home neglect or abuse that exist. Here is list:

• Emotional Abuse or Neglect
  This type of abuse is important to understand, because it is harder to detect than physical abuse, which we will talk about next. If you see signs of changed behavior in your loved one, you may immediately attribute it to loneliness for family and friends or a progression of their disease. You may be influenced by your guilt when you see changes in behavior, especially if you have not seen the patient in a while. But note that there is a relationship, in many cases, of time family spends with the patient and the attitude of the staff toward caring for that patient. So look closely at signs that will be outlined later in this article.
  
  Some forms of emotional abuse include intimidation, scapegoating, and treating the patient in demeaning ways.
  
  Some forms of emotional neglect include the patient being left alone or repeatedly ignored. Over-stressed staff may use poor judgment in the way they treat the patient leading to harmful incidents.This type of treatment over time can lead to severe harm.
  
  Because the changes in the patient can be more subtle, it is usually more difficult to litigate than nursing home physical abuse.
• Physical Abuse or Neglect
  Physical abuse can lead to physical signs like cigarette burns, scratches, scars, and unexplained bruises or marks. This type of abuse must be caught immediately, because it can quickly lead to severe harm of the patient or even death.
  
  Physical neglect can include things like not attending the physical needs of the patient as nursing home is obligated to. Signs would include things like malnutrition, dehydration, sudden weight loss, or bed sores.
• Sexual Abuse 
  
  This is not as common as physical or emotional mistreatment, but unfortunately it does happen. Elders may be tricked or coerced into sexual contact or intercourse. The typical victim of nursing home sexual abuse suffers from memory loss or confusion, or some sort of difficulty communicating.
  
  Here are some signs: the patient may suddenly become extremely agitated or withdrawn, and accompanying signs could be pelvic injury, sudden difficulty with walking or sitting, inappropriate aggressive or unusual sexual behavior, or suicide attempts.
  
  If you witness any of this kind of behavior then you need to call a law firm immediately that specializes in nursing home abuse like Legal Genius.

Financial Abuse
Admission to a nursing home, of course, can already cause a financial burden on the patient and the family. Piling on financial abuse from the nursing home staff on top of that can be very distressful and burdensome to say the least.

Financial abuse can take on the form of anywhere from forging a resident's signature to stealing a patient's possessions or money, to coercing the patient into signing documents like contracts or wills.

Signs of financial abuse include, unexplained transfers of money, missing personal belongings, or unexplained withdrawals from bank accounts.

What to Do in the Case of  Nursing Home Neglect or Abuse

As we discussed before, cases of nursing home neglect or abuse can be very hard to prove. If you suspect that your loved one in a nursing home is the victim of neglect or abuse, then you need to call an attorney experienced and successful in nursing home neglect and abuse cases. We at Legal Genius take all these cases very seriously and if you fill out the form on our site, one of our lawyers will contact you within five minutes. 

The Best Prevention

The best prevention against nursing home neglect or abuse is to find a good home for your loved one. Our next article will give you some strategies for this. We will also go over more of the signs to look for and how to proactively deal with any suspicion of abuse or neglect.