| All of these violations had the potential to harm nursing home residents. In over 1,600 of these nursing homes, the abuse violations were serious enough to cause actual harm to residents or to place the residents in immediate jeopardy of death or serious injury. Many of these abuse violations - over 40% - were discovered only after the filing of a formal complaint. The percentage of nursing homes with abuse violations is increasing, and in the year 2000, over twice as many nursing homes were cited for abuse violations than in the year 1996
Most Common Forms of Abuse or Neglect:
Failure to prevent bedsores ("decubitus ulcers"):
Bedsores usually occur on the hips, buttocks, back or heels as a result of pressure from the person's own body weight bruising the skin. If untreated, these sores can destroy tissue all the way to the bone. This problem can usually be eliminated if patients are turned by the nursing home staff every two hours to relieve pressure.
Malnutrition/Dehydration:
If the nursing home staff fails to properly monitor and record a patient's weight, fluid intake, and the amount of food eaten each day, patients can lose weight suddenly, and this can result in organ failure or death.
Frozen joints ("contractures"):
When patients do not receive proper physical therapy, including the exercise of the joints of their arms and legs, they can sometimes develop frozen joints, in which a patient's knees and/or arms contract to a fetal position.
Failure to train, supervise or terminate employees:
Many nursing home patients are injured by sloppy practices of untrained or poorly supervised nurses and nurses' aides. Nursing homes also often refuse to terminate the employment of personnel even when there have been numerous prior complaints of medical neglect or abusive conduct toward the residents.
Improper use of medicines:
Nursing home residents are frequently required to take multiple medications - all of which must be carefully monitored. Failure to provide the correct dosage of medicine or failure to provide the correct medicine often has catastrophic effects on the health of elderly people.
Failure to prevent injuries and falls:
Nursing home residents are at high risk of falls from physical weakness, osteoporosis, neurological damage from strokes, impaired vision, dizziness, dementia, side effects of medication, slippery floors, unstable furniture, and many other factors. All of these risks require the nursing home to exercise a high degree of care to protect residents from falls.
Inappropriate use of restraints:
The easy answer to preventing falls is the use of physical restraints, but unnecessary restraints frequently play a role in causing these falls. Recent research indicates that fewer restraints lead to fewer falls and less severe injuries.
Physical and Sexual Abuse:
Nursing home residents are frequently the victims of physical attacks by their caregiver or by other patients, and there has been a disturbing trend of sexual attacks in nursing homes. Physical or sexual abuse can be prevented by proper supervision, by criminal background checks on all nursing home employees, and continuous evaluation of the performance of the nursing home staff. |
