A claim filed against a nursing home over the death of a resident has resulted in a record $200 million verdict against the establishment.
Nursing home negligence.
In many cases, nursing home abuse targets the most vulnerable patients in the facility. Negligence, however, comes in many forms and so does abuse. While most people probably think of abuse as deliberately visiting violence or psychological abuse upon a patient, abuse can also take the form of simply neglecting to give a patient adequate care. Patients who have dementia, for instance, need to be monitored to make certain that they don’t wander off and put themselves in danger, as the woman in this lawsuit clearly did.
One of the problems with identifying nursing home abuse is sometimes implied by the complaints of the staff in this particular case. Understaffing create situations where the staff may not only be unaware of the fact that somebody is not receiving proper care, but when they also may not even be aware of the fact that a patient is in immediate danger. No matter how dedicated a nurse or a nurse’s aide happens to be, there is only so much they can do if they are overburdened with too many patients.
It’s important to remember that people in nursing home who are abused in any way, whether it is through neglect or outright abuse, oftentimes only have their families to rely upon to make the abuse come to an end. If you believe that your loved one was the victim of abuse in a nursing home facility, talking to an attorney who can help you file a lawsuit may be a wise course of action.