Nursing or rest homes are built to provide medical care to elderly or sick people. Most families who are not able to take care of or provide proper attention to their loved ones shift them to nursing homes, hoping their condition improves. However, sometimes nursing homes, due to negligence, overworked staff, improper treatment, or crowded facilities, fail to take care of their patients in a standard manner, leading to fatal injuries. That’s why it’s imperative to look for signs that may indicate physical and behavioral changes in your loved ones, as a little negligence can manifest itself in life-changing injuries.
Suppose your loved one has encountered such neglect or abuse in their nursing home. In that case, you must consult the authorities and a Cedar Rapids nursing home injury lawyer to protect your legal rights and seek compensation.
10 Most Common Nursing Home Abuse in Cedar Rapids:
Irregular eating habits, improper medications, and errors, a lack of attention, irregular monitoring of residents, and physical restraints have the potential to affect victims mentally, emotionally, and physically, which can result in the following common conditions:
1. Bed and Pressure Sores: These are lesions, i.e., harm to the body, which primarily result from constant pressure on the bony parts. It most likely affects the sacrum, coccyx, heels, elbows, or ankles. The blood flow decreases due to ceaseless pressure on these parts of the body, causing bodily tissue damage or necrosis in the process.
2. Sepsis: is a direct sign of meningitis, which means the protective membranes of your brain and spinal cord are damaged, often indicating a blood infection. The symptoms are high fever, chills, and a fast heartbeat or breathing.
3. Restraint Injuries: Neglecting physical damage or injuries of the individual at the nursing home and physically or chemically restraining them frequently implies excessive force. It can result in serious fractures, internal bleeding, strangulation, a head injury, and even death.
4. Malnutrition and Dehydration: In nursing homes, staff are required to take care of the individual’s eating and drinking habits cautiously. But when they don’t monitor these things, residents are susceptible to getting sick, weakened muscles, falls, infections, and depression. It can also indicate that the resident is having problems swallowing food or taking medication, which needs attention and immediate treatment.
5. Choking: Connecting with the above point, choking can happen when nursing home residents’ eating and drinking habits are not monitored properly. If they are not watched while they eat or drink, the staff won’t be able to determine if there’s any chewing, swallowing, or eating problem and can end up choking while eating.
6. Blocked Breathing Tubes: This simply means the residents deliberately have a breathing problem, which can result in severe brain damage or even death.
7. Burns: A series of negligent conditions in the nursing home, like smoking, leaving hot water near residents, providing scalding food or drink, spills, or fires, can potentially lead to life-altering and fatal injuries.
8. Medication Injuries: Due to improper management, recordkeeping, negligence, or treatment, sometimes nursing home staff forget or give wrong prescriptions to residents which can lead to injury or death.
9. Falls: It has been estimated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the typical nursing home in Cedar Rapids and all of Iowa has accounted for $5.7 million in fines in the past 5 years. Moreover, frequent falls might show symptoms like muscle weakness, medication problems, environmental hazards inside a home, or difficulty moving.
10. Head Injuries: Most nursing home residents, approximately one-third of them, hit their heads, which can lead to forward-moving falls, in which case they can hit their heads against the floor.
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