Saturday, March 30, 2013

Nursing Home Neglect - Emotional, Verbal and Physical Abuse


A nursing home that does not have the properly trained staff to carry out its responsibilities often dooms patients to regular abuse. While it is not a general observation or a fact that nursing homes neglect their patients, there are actually a number of nursing homes reported to have been mistreating and abusing their residents.

The elderly are often brought to nursing homes because their sons or daughters believe that these homes can take care of them better. However, blinded by the façade of these amazing elderly residences, those brought to the care of these homes suffer from physical and emotional neglect, as well as different kinds of abuses.

Commonly, areas of abuse include bedsores, malnutrition, wandering, physical abuse, mental abuse, falls, dehydration, and elopement. It is definite that these patients deserve only the best care, but with the rate of abuses that are regularly reported, this is no longer the case. The abuse does not only include in some mistreatment by neglect of physical needs but also both verbal and emotional abuse as well. Stories related by some patients tell of the insufferable verbal abuse that they often hear from nurses and attendants that were given the task to take care of their needs. These needs are all-encompassing and should be given the proper attention by these nurses.

Nurses should be appropriately trained so that they could in turn provide the right treatment to nursing home patients. When these nurses do not receive the proper training, their tendencies are to be impatient and unkind, often these emotions bring about the abuse they inflict on the elderly.

At times, abuses to the elderly result to serious injuries, and in the worst cases, result to death, either directly or indirectly. An elderly may run off and hurt himself, after hearing foul language or verbal abuse from his attendant. Words that hurt should not be heard since these old people lack the emotional security by being confined in these homes just to be aggravated by heartless nurses. Oftentimes, health requirements of patients are neglected such as the proper medical treatment or medication, dehydration, urinary tract infection, weight loss, and respiratory infections, which when left untreated would surely complicate the health of the patients and lead to death. The really unfathomable situation is when these homes justify death as the effect of poor health of the patients which they do not attribute to their own negligence.

When this happens, it is a very wise thing to seek the help of lawyers and attorneys who can help you in seeking justice for the injuries or death of a loved one, suffered under the hands of nurses and attendants in nursing homes.

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