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Anyone who is considering putting their loved one into a nursing home should understand the issues with safety that many facilities fail to correct. Continue reading
prREACH
Mar 30, 2017 /prREACH/ -- Thanks to advances in medicine, Americans are living longer than ever. That doesn’t mean, however, that they are always able to live on their own. Every year, thousands of elderly patients are placed into nursing homes because they suffer from serious medical conditions that make it impossible for them to take care of themselves or for their family to care for them.
There are many factors that a family has to consider when choosing the right care facility for their loved one but arguably, the most important thing to investigate is how safe the facility is. A shocking number of elderly are abused and neglected each year, both at the hands of their caregivers and at the hands of other patients. While many take for granted that safety should be an integral part of any nursing home’s plan of operation, the fact is that every year residents suffer serious physical injuries and, in some cases, they don’t survive.
Just recently, an elderly woman with dementia was allowed to wander unassisted through the hallways of her nursing home. She entered the room of a second dementia patient, who, because of his disease, believed her to be an intruder in his home and attacked. He broke multiple ribs, her nose, her orbital bones, and her neck. One of her lungs also collapsed. Although she did survive the attack, she died at the hospital three days later.
A situation like this should never have happened. Patients suffering from dementia are known to wander and to react violently if they feel threatened, which is why both of these patients should have been supervised.
This case is just one of many and families in New York are constantly fighting for new laws which will keep their loved ones safe and hold those responsible legally accountable for their failures.