Recognizing Nursing Home Abuse

When you place a loved one in a nursing home facility, you will obviously want your loved one be given the best care and facilities at times. Unfortunately, what you want isn’t what you get most of the time. Nursing home neglect and abuse do happen. Recognizing potential abuse in nursing homes requires careful monitoring and understanding of how abuse occurs and in what forms they occur. With proper knowledge of the issues related to nursing home abuse, you will be able to either prevent it or provide notice to the nursing home facility of the harm that has been done to your loved one.

Nursing home abuse can either be physical, verbal or emotional. Signs of physical abuse include battery, rape, assault, unreasonable physical restraint, unexplained injuries, open wounds, cuts or bruises, prolonged deprivation of food and water, drowsiness, dry and cracked lips, and vacant stare from over medication. On the other hand, verbal or emotional abuse may include unusual behavior such as biting and sucking; emotionally upset; wanting to be isolated form other people; insulting, frightening or threatening behavior towards family or friends; and extremely withdrawn and non-communicative.

Although nursing home abuse can be difficult to recognize, it is still important that you become observant of all the progress of your loved one in the home as abuse and neglect are often covered-up by nursing home staff. Oftentimes, the root cause of abuse in nursing homes is under trained, underpaid and high turn over rate of employees. So before you decide on putting your loved one in a nursing home make a thorough assessment of the home and if possible ask for referrals from your family and friends. Nursing home abuse and neglect does not only involve the physical well-being of the resident but also their mental and psychological well-being.

You may often be devastated and frustrated as you find yourself in the position of protecting a loved one from the establishment in-charged with and being paid for your loved one’s care. The experience can be confusing and overwhelming. Hence, it is imperative to be always on guard for the signs of abuse. If you suspect there is a problem, immediately make an investigation and do not hesitate to complaint to the nursing homes’ management. If the matter cannot be resolved by the nursing home administrator, you may ask the assistance of advocacy groups, private lawyers and the government.