Nursing Home Dangers Can Cause Serious Injuries

When you commit yourself or a loved one to the care of a skilled nursing home staff you expect that you will be given proper attention and care to prevent injury. When people enter nursing home care the reason is because they cannot care for themselves. They may not be able to walk safely without falling. They may not be able to feed themselves or bathe themselves with out assistance. So when the services of a nursing home or long-term care facility are engaged, it’s reasonable to expect a level of care and attention that provides for patient safety.

That expectation is not unreasonable. There are standards that apply to nursing facilities, for example, in the prevention of fall injuries. There are requirements to do a fall risk assessment for each patient, and take necessary steps to see that the patient is properly identified as a fall risk so that people staffing the facility provide an appropriate level of care that is needed for each particular patient. For example, there are alarms that can be obtained and put onto patient beds to sound a warning at a nurses station that the patient is attempting to get out of bed without assistance, or trying to exit a chair or bed without assistance. In some cases an unreasonable delay in responding to a call light for assistance, which leads the patient to attempt to walk on their own to a washroom, can result in liability.

However, one of the more common types of nursing home injuries would be what’s called a pressure sore, or a bedsore, or sometimes it’s called a pressure ulcer. These types of conditions develop when the patient cannot move on their own, and the nursing care staff is not moving the patient with sufficient frequency, or they’re not using the right type of mattress designed to eliminate or reduce pressure on the skin of an immobile patient. Moreover, many hazardous conditions can develop because of inadequate staffing. In other words, if the standard of care is to move and adjust patients within a specified period of time, and there is inadequate staff to handle all of the patients, and provide timely repositioning of the patients, then you may have a claim based on inadequate staffing.

We have handled many nursing home claims. Whether it be a nurse who drops a patient while assisting the patient to a wheelchair because the nurse was distracted by something going on nearby. Or whether it involves a nurse attempting to move a patient without a proper gait belt wrapped around the patient to make sure that that patient is properly harnessed and not subject to falling. Or whether it is a patient allowed to fall from a mattress being fitted with fresh linens resulting in a patient rolling off the mattress and onto the floor. We have seen nearly every situation you can imagine.

While we can only highlight some of the types of nursing home injuries we have seen, we are always willing to listen to callers and provide advice and guidance, so please feel free to call our legal team at 219-736-9700, if you have questions or concerns about injuries resulting from inadequate nursing care.

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