Saturday, June 15, 2013

Pressure Sores in Nursing Homes Lead to Closure


Once a person is sick we do our best to alleviate whatever pain he has. We seek for professional care. When we are too busy with a lot of responsibilities, we depend on those professionals and their skills to better our patient's condition. But what happens when we find out our patient developing pressure sores in nursing homes?

Pressure sores are deadly. They are not simple lesions that can be found on the pressure points but they can cause further infection and complications. According to some cases reported, severe pressure sores can lead to amputation and death. This is the reason why some families of victims do not just accept settlement negotiation from these facilities. For a patient to develop pressure sores in nursing homes is a manifestation that there is negligence among those health care professionals. So why is still there a room for negligence?

According to some studies,elderly facilities sometimes give poor health care because of the following reasons:

Lack of staff. SNU-Skilled nursing units need to have enough skilled health care providers. Due to a rapid growth of this industry, it has been tough for those which are having poor income to keep up. Competitive salary can't be offered to skilled health care providers. Thus, the facility cannot attend to every patient well.

Lack of training among staff. For this industry, it is very important that all of the staff receive training on the latest medical updates. Most of the cases handled by pressure sore lawyers include lack of training as the main reason for sores to develop. They lack training and updates like how often a turning is needed for a specific patient condition.

Lack of good health care facility. This includes not just the medical equipment used but also beddings and bed foams. There is already a new technology that can prevent pressure sores from happening. This is using an air bed that has air chambers to evenly distribute pressure. Some nursing homes are already using this, however this can be expensive.

Lack of proper sanitation. Patients develop sores because proper sanitation is not implemented. Patients are found to be sitting in their urine which makes them more susceptible to bacteria.

Those points should be considered by elderly facilities to keep their license active. A significant number of nursing homes lost their license due to neglect of providing good health care. As more and more family members of patients do not just accept money to settle any lawsuit that is filed against them and hire pressure sore lawyers to make sure that the nursing home pays their due.

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