Nursing home abuse is a bitter truth that is spreading around us today. Our senior citizens are getting affected by nursing home abuse regularly. We place our loved ones in nursing homes with pure trust in the management and staff members.
Family members expect them to treat their loved ones with dignity and kindness, but unfortunately, sometimes that is not the case. Consulting with a legal team from mokaramlawfirm.com/tx/plano will be helpful. They will guide you through all the crucial aspects surrounding nursing home abuse and how you can protect your loved ones.
Let us look into it further so that you will know when to get help from the law.
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Understanding Nursing Home Abuse
If someone hurts a senior citizen under the management of a nursing home and that action is intentional or negligence-based, causing harm or potential risk. This kind of abuse falls under the category of nursing home abuse. Studies have shown that the victims of elder abuse are more likely to die prematurely as compared to normal elderly citizens.
It is crucial for us to understand and acknowledge the harmful effects of elder abuse, also known as nursing home abuse. This abuse can cause severe physical injuries with lifetime effects, psychological trauma, and even death.
Common Types of Elder Abuse
There are several types of nursing home abuse or elder abuse, including bodily abuse like physical abuse, emotional or mental abuse, sexual abuse, negligence, and finance-related abuse. Let us look into them further:
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Physical Abuse
Physical abuse or neglect involves a human’s fundamental rights and requirements to survive. Depriving senior citizens of their food, shelter, warmth, dignity, and clean and sanitary environment falls under this category.
Unfortunately, this type of abuse is the most common and disgusting. Physical abuse is linked to bodily injuries, harm, and mistreatment, resulting in impairment. Physical abuse includes active abuse like slapping, punching, throwing or hitting, etc. It also includes misuse of physical restraints and neglect.
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Mental or Emotional Abuse
Emotional or mental abuse is linked to non-bodily abuse or verbal abuse. For instance, disrespecting older people, degrading them, putting them down, yelling at them, harassing them, and giving threats all of this count as emotional abuse.
Depriving them of their dignity, like treating a patient poorly by not helping them with their soiled clothes, not letting them make their daily decisions, etc. According to the data collected by the World Health Organization, almost a third of nursing home caregivers have accepted that they are guilty of emotionally abusing elderly patients.
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Sexual Abuse
It involves all the sexual acts or contacts without the consent of the person. Unfortunately, it is a very dominant form of abuse. If you want to check for the signs of any sexual abuse or harm, you can look for bruises around the sensitive areas and unexplained conditions linked to sexual acts like sexually transmitted diseases.
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Financial Abuse
Financial abuse or financial exploitation involves the illegal possession, hiding, and misuse of people’s funds and property. Older people suffering from cognitive decline and dementia are more likely to fall for this financial fraud. This is because criminals working there as caregivers are well aware of the medical conditions of the patients.
How Can You Report Nursing Home Abuse?
Reporting a nursing home abuse is crucial to reducing the percentage of home abuse cases. It will spread awareness and help the higher management to take proper measures to ensure the safety of older people.
If you suspect your loved one is a victim or could be the victim of nursing home abuse, you should report this to the concerned authorities as early as you can. Initially, try to report the abuse to the senior administration of that particular nursing home and see if they can take any action on this.
If they are not interested in addressing the issue, you can contact the higher agency managing all the nursing homes in that area. Fortunately, almost all the states have agencies dedicated to maintaining discipline in nursing homes.
They will help you file a report to prevent further elder abuse. You can connect with eldercare.gov or look into the Ombudsman program that protects older people’s rights. You can also contact your local sheriff and file a report. Don’t forget to consult with a diligent attorney in the field of elderly abuse or nursing home abuse claims.
How Can You Prevent Nursing Home Abuse?
Be consistent in searching for the signs of physical abuse on the body of your loved one. Raise your concerns with the administration and see if they can help you with the problem. And actively investigate or search nursing home’s premises for any red flags.
Federal laws require nursing homes to be persistent in reporting any elder abuse or mishaps linked to the administration’s negligence.
